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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 











































































































































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Hesitation 


TO THE 

WOMAN’S CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION, 
v AND THE 

BOYS OF THE REFORM CLUB, OF ROCKFORD, ILLINOIS, 

AND ALL THEIR BRETHREN WHO ARE MARCHING IN THE RANKS 

OF 

REFORMED MEN, 

• AND TO THE YOUNG MEN WHOM WE HOPE WILL 
NEVER NEED TO REFORM, 

THIS STORY OF MY PLEDGE ROLL IS DEDICATED. 

LET YOUR MOTTO BE EVER “ ONWARD ” 

UNTIL YOU ARE EVERY ONE NOT ONLY TRULY 
REFORMED MEN 
BUT 

TRANSFORMED MEN, 

ACCORDING TO THE PLAN AND PURPOSE OF THE GOSPEL. 
























































































Part I. 




OUR PLEDGE ROLL. 






OUR PLEDGE ROLL. 


CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTION. 

'ERE is a book belonging to the 
Woman’s Christian Temperance 
Union of our city upon the 
pages of which have drifted 
many names that had been al- 
most lost from family records, 
and business directories, and so- 
cial annals until from out the 
depths into which they had 
dropped they were washed 
ashore by the high tide of reform, and lay strand- 
ed — naked of all that goes to clothe and beautify 
a name — upon these white pages, from whence 
they have been gathered up again and restored to 
the places that had known them in other days, 
before the storm of temptation had swept their 
fair sea, and the night of degradation had closed 
over the wreck of all that makes a name anything 
more than a name. 

This book, Our Pledge Roll, has become to 
many a book of life — an index-sheet to the book 
which shall be opened when the throne is set and 
• the roll-call of the universe shall be read. 



IO 


Our Pledge Roll. 


To some of these names belong histories that it 
will be well to preserve, and to these histories be- 
long truths, facts, experiences that concern re- 
formers, and for this reason I have begun these 
sketches. 

As a background to the scenes portrayed I will 
first give you an idea of our surroundings. 

We are in a city of from fifteen to sixteen thou- 
sand inhabitants, with sixteen churches, and twen- 
ty-one saloons running under a system of license 
which has grown up under the fostering care of 
leaders in some of these churches. 

There is a band of women, known as the Wo- 
man’s Christian Temperance Union, the purpose 
of whose organization is to check the prosperity 
of the saloon — ay, to destroy it — to the end that 
the Christian element may not be entirely nulli- 
fied ; that the churches may not become altogether 
a hissing and a byword ; that the sons of their 
homes may not become total wrecks ; that the 
ruin in places already become waste may be re- 
paired ; that men and women may be saved, and 
God and his Gospel be glorified. 

The women of this Union are not those who 
have been clamoring for public place and contest- 
ing the field for their “ rights ” even ; they are not 
those who have been asking for the ballot, but 
they are the steady-going wives and mothers — 
the women who have been content with quiet 
household work and the recompense which was 
given them in love, and honor, and the gentle 
returns of the home and social circle, until it be- 


Our Pledge Roll. 


1 1 

came very apparent to them that somehow the 
real work of the house and home had gone away 
outside the sacred enclosure which had hitherto 
shut it in. It was as if a great peril had suddenly 
overtaken the loved ones without — as though, in 
the graphic words of Jeremiah, “death had come 
and entered into their palaces to cut off the chil- 
dren from without, and the young men from the 
streets.” And what was left for woman to do ? 
Nothing but to hasten to the scene of danger, 
dragging her work with her, may be, but going , 
true to the strongest instinct of the human soul. 

Some have said to these women, “ Stay at home 
and make home pleasant, and all will be well.” 
Didn’t they stay at home until the tide of sin set 
in so far as to bear them off their feet ? What was 
the use to stay at home any more, and make home 
pleasant and cheery, and spread the evening meal, 
and light the evening lamp, when the husband 
and son, for whom all this was done, were 
down in the saloon ? The day came when a wo- 
man’s house-work took her out into the drinking- 
holes of the city, and sent her even to the plat- 
form. 

Rooms were rented and provided with reading 
matter, and kept open always ; and it became the 
duty of the writer of these sketches to be in those 
rooms, and do the work which will be revealed 
in these pages. It was a work for souls, first and 
last, and often seemed more like a hand-to-hand 
combat with the powers of darkness than any- 
thing else ; but it paid. 


12 Our Pledge Roll. 

These sketches are all true, excepting names, 
and the club boys will be able to point out the dif- 
ferent individuals in many instances, and each his- 
tory will serve to illustrate some principle of this 
reform, which has long since ceased to be local. 

This was the spirit of the organized force of the 
women of our city, known as the Woman s Chris- 
tian Temperance Union. Many of these women 
knew nothing of the curse of strong drink in their 
own homes, but the burdens of other women were 
laid upon them, according to the law of Christ; 
and for the sake of these, and for the sake of 
young men who were away from home, employed 
in our manufactories, without home restraints and 
influences, crowded often into close quarters in 
boarding-houses, they began and carried forward 
their work. 


CHAPTER II. 


E day, about three years ago, 
there came into the Temperance 
Rooms a man who bore in 
every lineament of his face — 
the disordered hair, bloodshot 
eyes, the puffy cheeks and un- 
tidy mouth — the traces of dissi- 
pation and sin. ITe had the 
air of a man' completely de- 
moralized and discouraged, and 
brought with him a smell of sour beer, and poor 
whiskey, and third or fourth grade tobacco that 
would have driven almost any but a temperance 
woman from the room. 

I arose to meet him, knowing from every ap- 
pearance that he was a subject for the grace of 
reform ; and reaching out my hand to him, which 
he took, a dialogue ensued — viz. : 

“Mrs. H ?” 

“Yes, sir; that is my name. Come to the 
table. Have a chair, paper? Make yourself at 
home.” 

“ Thanks ; don’t want to read. I came over to 
ask you if you think there’s any hope for a fellow 
like me.” 

“Why, certainly there is hope. The very fact 
13 



14 Our Pledge Roll 

that you have come here to ask that question 
proves it.” 

“ May be you would not say that if you knew 
all about me.” 

“Tell me all about you, then, and we will see.” 

The young man sat with his head bowed on 
his hand for a moment, while the blush of hon- 
est shame came to the surface. As he remained 
silent, I asked : 

“ Your name, sir, please.” 

And as he looked up, and spoke a name having 
most honorable mention in years gone by in busi- 
ness circles of the Northwest, I knew something 
about the man before me, and wondered at the 
degradation that had befallen his father s name 
and estate, as revealed in this son and heir, and a 
strong desire to lift this man up to the place he 
ought to fill took possession of me ; and with a 
prayer to Goa for help, I spoke a few words of 
encouragement to get him started in the story 
which he had evidently come to tell, and after a 
moment he began his recital. 

Charles Hunter’s father was a man of wealth 
and influence, and owned one of the finest home- 
steads in the West, where this son was born. His 
mother, who was a Christian woman, died when 
he was about two years old, and from that time 
he was left to the care of his own will and con- 
trolled by his own impulses. 

He was not sent to school, because he did not 
like to go. He had plenty of money ; and be- 
cause of this, and because of his father’s position, 


Our Pledge Roll ’ 


15 


he was flattered and petted until he outgrew 
such attentions and was feared for his temper, 
while he was courted and tolerated for the sake 
of that which his money would buy. 

He learned to smoke and chew while too 
young to remember the beginning of the habit, 
and learned to drink almost as soon. 

Thus matters went on ; the power of vicious 
habits strengthening with his strength and grow- 
ing with the growth of every nerve and muscle 
and sinew of his framework. Every drop of his 
young blood was heated with strange fires, until 
all traces of the purity of childhood had been 
burned out while he was still but a boy. No in- 
fluences came to him from the churches of his 
city, or the Christian women who were yet 
spared to their sons, which were calculated to 
neutralize this poison and save the boy from 
corruption and death. 

“ Oh ! ” I thought, as I sat and listened, “ it is 
time that our sluggish Christianity be awakened, 
if the little son of a dead Christian woman could 
be left to the power of such influences, to the 
maturity of such a life of sin.” 

Mr. Hunter died, leaving Charles, with his 
brothers, to inherit a large fortune. Charlie 
married a woman who sought him, with all his 
evil life and associations, for his money ; and from 
this point he went down more rapidly, if possible, 
than before. He said, while speaking of this 
period of his life : 

“ I do think at this time, if the right influence 


i6 


Our Pledge Roll 


had come to me, I might have been a different 
man ; for I did have convictions of the wrong, 
and desires to be better and make a home.” 

But, under the circumstances, a home in any 
sense of the word was out of the question. 

When a son was born Mr. Hunter again felt 
the movings of a better life; but the spark of 
heaven in his soul was quenched by the waters 
of continual domestic infelicity, and left nothing 
but cinders. 

Somewhere about this time he left home and 
went on a sea voyage of pleasure to the Old 
World. On the return voyage across the Atlantic 
the ship encountered a heavy storm and foundered. 
During that terrible night of peril he tremblingly 
confessed himself a sinner before God, and on his 
knees promised, if spared, to live a different life. 
“ But,” he said, “ would you believe it? The first 
thing I did when we were taken off the wreck by 
another vessel, and the danger was over, was to 
go to the ship’s bar and call for a ‘ whiskey 
straight.’ ” And the bitterness of repentance was 
forgotten. 

At the beginning of the Rebellion he enlisted, 
and passed through the war, coming out with a 
wound and an honorable discharge, only to go on 
in his reckless course. 

“ I can see,” he said, “ that some strange 
power has preserved me, or I should have been 
dead or in prison long before this, instead of sit- 
ting here telling you these things. 

“ Once, after the war, and after my wife had left 


Our Pledge Roll. 


W 

me with the child (my money was all gone long 
before this), I was in the South and was complete- 
ly stripped, and became a common tramp. I had 
fallen in with some fellows worse than I, if possible, 
and we had got to the very bottom of our pile, 
and were hungry. We wanted to get out of that 
country, and so we formed the plan of robbing a 
certain street-car conductor in the city. The plan 
was to get aboard his car on his last trip at night, 
and ride to the end of the route, and then follow 
him as he went to his home, which was some dis- 
tance from the station, and rob him — quietly if we 
could, but kill him if we must. We drew lots 
about our parts in the affair, and I was to help 
hold him while the others went through him and 
finished the business. 

“ We primed ourselves pretty well with ‘ stagger- 
juice ’ at the saloons — you could always get that 
if j'ou couldn’t get bread — but I was so strangely 
excited over the prospect of crime that I did not 
drink as much as usual, and was comparatively 
sober. 

“We started from the saloon at the time ap- 
pointed to take the car. It was light in the 
street ; and as we were walking along I hit my 
foot against something on the walk, and, picking 
it up, I found it to be a pocket-book. It was well 
filled ; and as soon as I saw the money my reso- 
lution was taken not to go on, but take that money 
and get out. I believed then, and do now, that 
Providence had something to do with that pocket- 
book. I told the boys I should give up the plan 


i8 


Our Pledge Roll . 


of the robbery. They objected at first and swore 
a good deal, but when they found I wouldn't go 
they gave it up, too. We divided the money, 
which was enough to help us all around, and 
separated then and there, and I came home.” 

“ What do you suppose became of the others? ” 
I asked. 

“ I heard of some of them through the papers 
— gone to the bad, where I’m going if I don’t 
stop.” 

From that time, taking the terrible lesson of 
those days to heart, he had stayed quietly at 
home in the city of his birth ; had picked up a 
trade and gone to work. Sometimes a vague 
thought of a better life would come to him from 
somewhere, and he would “swear off” and sober 
up for a while ; but his character among the peo- 
ple was of the hardest. 

The temperance work of the past year had had 
its influence on him, although he did not attend 
the meetings or come directly in the way of the 
work anywhere. But he heard it talked about, 
and knew of the reformation of some of his old 
companions ; and the thought kept coming that 
there might be hope even for him. 

“ If such men as they can reform I ought to, I 
used to think,” he said, “ but was afraid to try. 
About three weeks ago,” he went on, “ I came 
to the conclusion I was lost if I did not try, and I 
made up my mind I would see you and ask if you 
thought there was a chance. I asked the fellows 
in the shop if they knew you. They said yes, by 


l 9 


Our Pledge Roll. 

sight. I asked them to point you out to me, if 
you passed. Soon after, one day, you were pass- 
ing, and one of the boys told me so. I dropped 
my work, and went out and around so as to meet 
you, thinking to stop you and ask if you thought 
there was any hope for a fellow like me. But I 
hadn’t the courage to speak, so you passed on 
and I went back to the shop, feeling that my 
chance was gone.” 

“What made you feel this way, do you sup- 
pose?” I asked, greatly moved. 

“ I don’t know ; but I did. And I have done 
that same thing three times, but when I would 
get up to you on the street I just couldn’t speak ; 
I couldn’t stop a lady on the street. So this morn- 
ing I threw down my work, and left the shop on 
purpose to come up here and tell you this, and 
ask you if you think there is any hope.” 

And he looked, up into my face with an appeal 
I shall never forget. ^ 

“ Hope ? Of course there is hope ! ” I exclaim- 
ed. “It is for just such a fellow as you that 
Christ came to bring in a hope.” 

“ What shall I do ? ” he asked. 

“ Stop drinking, give yourself to Christ, and 
you will be saved.” 

“ Oh ! ” he replied to this with a short, quick 
laugh and a shrug, “ temperance and religion 
both would be as bad as too much whiskey for a 
fellow like me.” 

I did not reply at once, and he added, taking 
up the pledge roll : 


20 


Our Pledge Roll. 


“ I want to sign this pledge for a little while, 
and see if I can keep it. Will you give it that 
way? Will you give it till the ist of April, 
say ? ” 

“ Certainly. I will give it just as you can take 
it ; for I want you to get sober, so you can think 
and see straight, and then we will talk it over 
again. But 1 am a little afraid that that ‘ ist of 
April ’ will be like a stake driven in the ground, 
against which you will stub your toe and fall 
when you come to it. Better take it for life.” 

“ Not yet ; I am afraid. I wouldn’t like to 
break that pledge. I will try for six months, and 
if I can keep it that long I will take it for life.” 

So he wrote his name with a trembling hand, 
and after it “Until April I, 187-”; signed the 
pocket-pledge in the same manner, placing it in 
his note-book, and then turned and looked at me 
with a courage quite unlike the despondency of 
a few moments before. 

I can hardly express the thoughts that came to 
me as I met his eye and measured the purpose 
and power of this man. I remembered that he 
was going out with the habits of a lifetime, on the 
one hand, in strong alliance with the thirst that 
would be sure to come* and the open saloons all 
along his way, and the solicitations of old com- 
panions ; and upon the other, only this pledge, 
limited, conditional at best, and a very vague 
desire for a better life, with a hope that was really 
but little better than despair. This was allied 
now to the prayers and influence of the Woman’s 


Our Pledge Roll. 


2 I 

Christian Temperance Union; by them, of course, 
allied to the infinite resources of heaven. But this 
part of the matter was all unknown to him, un- 
dreamed of even ; and thus, unevenly balanced as 
it seemed, he was going- out to meet the future, 
and my heart sank almost. 

“ That pledge will be good for nothing between 
him and the glass he would die for almost to- 
morrow,” I thought; £nd feeling the necessity 
of Christ in this work as I had never done before, 
I said : 

“ Now you must have God’s help. You want to 
keep this pledge ; if you do it, you must take the 
last part of it, 4 Lord help me.’ And I want you 
to kneel down here and let me ask God to bless 
your effort and to save you.” 

He knelt at once, and with an earnest heart I 
took his case to the Strong One, who only could 
save him. 

After prayer we sat and talked soberly, he 
listening to all I said like one who really wished 
to learn. I told him about how his appetite for 
strong drink would come back with the regularity 
of chills and fever, at stated periods, and that the 
time would come when he would need help ; and 
I said : 

“ I always ask a promise of men to whom I give 
the pledge ; I want this promise of you. When 
you begin to feel the need of a drink will you 
come to me for it ? ” 

He broke into a real jolly laugh at the idea, and 
then said : 


22 Our Pledge Roll 

“Why, yes, I will promise; but I shall not 
want drink unless I go where it is, and I don’t 
mean to do that.” 

“ But,” I said, “you will want it. Your system 
will crave its accustomed stimulant, and this crav- 
ing will come with periodical regularity, as I told 
you a moment ago ; I want you to remember this. 
And if you will tell me when you took your last 
drink — ” 

“Just before I came here. I had to take a 
drink to give me courage to come.” 

“Well, we have the date with your pledge; 
and if you will let me know as soon as you begin 
to feel nervous, cross, headache in the morning, 
and a i gone feeling,’ and, in short, feel that you 
must have something to ‘ brace you up,’ I can 
tell you just how often you will feel these symp- 
toms, and you will be able to prepare for the 
emergency, and thus make your work of reform a 
success. This is what you want to do ? ” 

“ God knows I do.” 

“ I believe you do. Will you come, then, to me 
when you want a drink? ” 

“ I will,” he replied earnestly, and shook my 
hand to seal the promise. 

Soon after he took his leave, and as he went 
down the stairs I thought : “ What a fight he must 
have, poor fellow ! God help him ! ” And for the 
days following he was almost constantly in my 
mind. Three weeks passed, and I heard nothing 
from him, and began to be a little uneasy. So 
one day I went to the shop where he was cm- 


2 3 


Our Pledge Roll. 

ployed, and, waiting in the office, sent for him. 
As he came in I noticed a change which made me 
glad, and, shaking his hand, I said : 

“ I hardly need to ask you how you get along, 
for your face shows that you are doing splen- 
didly.” 

“ Yes, I feel better. I haven’t been to see you, 
for I haven’t wanted a drink yet.” 

“ But you will want it ; then you will remem- 
ber your promise?” 

“ I will certainly come,” he said, with a bright 
look and a cheery laugh which did me good, 
although it evidently meant, “ The Tempe- 
rance Rooms would be a queer place to go for a 
drink.” 

Three weeks more passed, and I heard nothing 
from him, until one day, just six weeks from the 
time he signed the pledge, about ten o’clock A.M., 
he came into the Rooms with the air of a man 
grappling with a terrible resolution of some kind. 
I knew the tokens, and stepping forward to greet 
him — being sure to get his hand, and holding it, 
too, besides throwing as much good cheer as I 
could into look and tone — I said : 

“ Good-morning, Charlie ! How are you this 
morning ? ” 

“ O Mrs. IT ! I never wanted a drink as I 

do this morning, and I’ve got to have it.” 

“ Oh ! not quite so bad as that,” I replied cheer- 
ily. “You don’t mean that you really want to go 
and get drunk f ” . 

“No, I don't want to do that . But I’ve got to 


24 


Our Pledge Roll. 


have a drink all the same, for I cannot stand this 
terrible feeling.” 

“ Well,” I said, “ if it was going to last always 
I wouldn’t say a word ; but if you will just hold 
on a few hours, and let me give you some medi- 
cine, this will pass off.” 

“Come,” I said, as I saw a look of impatience 
come into his face, “ I want you to promise me 
one thing first before you go.” i 

“Yes,” he said quickly ; “ what is it? ” 

“ That you will do just as I tell you to-day — just 
for one day ; that you will mind me like a good 
boy, in fact.” 

He laughed at this, and taking a chair by the 
door, while I was careful to keep between him 
and the door, he said : 

“ Well, I guess I could stand it one day. What 
shall I do?” 

“ Stay right here in the Rooms. Some of the 
boys whom you know will be in soon, and you 
will find it pleasant, I’m sure.” 

He did not answer at once. I laid my hand on 
his shoulder, and stood, with my heart too full 
for anything but prayer, waiting for the decision 
which would settle the matter of his reformation ; 
for I felt his answer now would settle the question. 

At length he said, looking up into my face : 

fi Well, I’ll do it. I can stand it one day.” 

I knew that the motive of this promise was 
not to too deeply grieve me by going right out 
from my presence to get liquor, when he could not 
help seeing how I was going to feel about it. 


2 5 


Our Pledge Roll. 

But I knew that a day of time now was equiva- 
lent to a world of influence ; and keeping to my- 
self all 1 could see of his motive and all I felt over 
his decision, I led him up to the table, took his hat, 
and, sitting down near him, picked up a paper 
with a column of witticisms, and began reading 
the humorous items. I gave him medicine, which 
he took with a deprecating laugh ; I sang Gospel 
songs ; talked about how men whom he knew 
were building themselves up every way ; and giv- 
ing him a Bible, while I took one also, read to him 
and expounded some passages that were of a na- 
ture to help him. And thus began the real work 
of giving this man the help he needed. The boys 
began to come in after a while, and they, knowing 
each “ how it is himself,” furnished real practical 
aid in keeping Mr. Hunter’s mind turned from the 
subject of his own condition. And thus the day 
passed, the men taking care, after they first came 
in, that some one of their number was with us to 
entertain Charlie ; and before many hours his mo- 
ral power began to revive and came to his help 
again, and he was saved for this time. He looked 
back to the morning with something like terror, 
such as would be experienced in looking over by 
daylight a dangerous road travelled in the night ; 
and his thankfulness and gratitude ne.eded no 
words to give them expression. I told him then 
to count lip the time, and remember that this 
would return in just six weeks ; and while he 
would have the experience of this deliverance for 
his encouragement, as well as added strength for 


26 


Our Pledge Roll. 


his support, yet he must not try to meet this 
temptation single-handed, and I wanted a new 
promise that he would come to me again. 

“I shall certainly come/’ he replied. And 
he did come repeatedly as the time when he 
needed a refuge from the assaults of the demon 
thirst would come ; but he never suffered again as 
at first, and he never violated his pledge. 

At length he became a regular frequenter of the 
Rooms, spending all the time, when not at work, 
there ; and he became an almost constant reader 
of the Bible, copies of which were scattered over 
the Rooms. 

I was careful not to intrude the subject of per- 
sonal religion upon him or any other man who 
came in. I made this a principle. After the first 
solid Gospel talk given to every man with the 
pledge, he was left to open the topic himself, al- 
though he was given to understand that he was 
prayed for daily by the members of our Union, 
and that his salvation was the object for which 
we worked. 

Charlie wanted to talk often upon this matter. 
He would come with the Bible open at some pas- 
sage that interested him, and would ask that it be 
explained. And it was no unusual thing for sev- 
eral men, led on by his interest, to join us about 
the table with open Bibles ; and many earnest, 
searching conversations were thus started and 
blessed by the Spirit of God. I always made a 
point of opening the matter of personal salvation 
and pointing out the way to Christ in these talks. 


27 


Our Pledge Roll 

Thus matters went on until New Year’s day. 
We served lunch and received calls all day in the 
Rooms, and Charlie was out and in, assisting the 
ladies in their work. 

Upon my table, at which I sat all day, were a 
register and the pledge roll, and many names 
were added that day to this record of better 
things. Charlie had come several times and look- 
ed on as some of those Whom he had known wrote 
their names to the pledge ; and I could but notice 
a strange interest manifested in his every look. 

Along toward evening, as there was a lull in 
the bustle and work, he came to the table, and, 
seating himself, began turning back in the pledge 
roll. He ran his finger along the dates until he 
found his own name ; and while his face was very 
pale with his determination, and his hand trem- 
bled, he took up the pen and ran a heavy mark 
across “ Until the ist of April, 187-,” and said with 
a sigh of relief : 

“ There, now that stands for life.” 

“ God bless you ! ” I said. “ And is it not for a 
new life ? ” 

“Yes, Mrs. H , that is what I meant, God 

helping me.” 

We had no chance for much conversation that 
afternoon. The next day was Sunday. He was 
at church in the morning, and at the regular Gos- 
pel meeting in the rooms in the afternoon, and I 
could see the great question, “ What shall I do to 
be saved ?” growing in his eyes. I told him after 
the meeting that I should hope to see him in the 


28 


Our Pledge Roll . 

meetings in the church during the evenings of 
the “ Week of Prayer,” and he promised to at- 
tend. And he was true to the promise ; and no 
one could fail to see the soul of the man, hungry 
and thirsty for the bread and water of salvation, 
impressed upon his face as he sat and listened to 
the word of exhortation or experience. 

One afternoon during this week he came to me 
with broken utterances, and said : “ I can’t stand 
this any longer. I have been praying, and have 
promised the Lord 1 will serve him, but I only 
feel worse. I guess it’s no use — he won’t save 
me, I’m such a sinner.” 

“ You dear boy!” I said, “do you think your 
heavenly Father would bring you along thus far 
and then let you drop? ” 

“ I shouldn’t think he would,” he said ; “ but 
what more can I do?” 

“ I’ll tell you, Charles, what I think you must 
do. You have been a public sinner? ” 

“ Yes,” he sighed. 

“ You must publicly announce your purpose to 
be a Christian. Confess that you do need this 
Jesus before those who have heard you profane 
his name.” 

“ How can I do that?” 

“ To-night, when the invitation is given in the 
church for those who feel as you do to arise and 
show by that act that they are going to be for 
God from this day, will you do it? ” 

“ O Mrs. FI ! I can’t.” 

“ Do you not think you ought?” 


29 


Our Pledge Roll. 

“ Yes; I did last night. I wanted to say, ‘ Do 
pray for me.’ I thought I must, but I couldn’t 
stir.” 

“ Let us ask God to help you, Charlie.” 

So we knelt and prayed, and the Spirit of the 
Lord did come to his help. 

“I must do this,” he said, “ and, if God will 
help 'me, I will” ; but as he walked up the street 
with me on his way home that evening he walked 
like an old man, so heavy was the burden upon 
him. 

“ I’m going home to pray for you, Charlie,” I 
said, as we parted at the corner. 

“ Do, for oh ! I need it,” he replied. 

When he came into church that night I knew 
that his resolution was firmly taken ; and when the 
time came, and he arose to his feet in the sight 
of all the people, and thus put himself over against 
his old life for ever, I could see the light come to 
his face, and knew that his burden was gone. 
He entered into a blessed experience of salvation 
through faith in Christ Jesus, and has gone stea- 
dily forward in the work of reformation until he 
is a new man in look and life — a living example 
of what the grace of God can do for one who has 
almost lost his bearings and seems utterly with- 
out hope. 

I shall never forget the day when I saw him 
admitted into the full fellowship of 'the church, 
and how the name that a dying mother must 
have spoken to God with agonizing prayer was 
in that hour lifted up from all that it had gathered 


30 


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out of the slums of sin, and, being cleansed by 
association with the name of the Friend of sin- 
ners, was entered among those of the sons of 
God. 

Neither shall it ever be forgotten how, in the 
days of fiery trial, when the scourge of tongues 
was beaten about him, busy with things of the 
dead and God-forgotten past, when nothing was 
left undone that could be done to break down his 
strength of purpose, yet he stood grand in his 
integrity, for ever proving that when God lifts a 
man up it is that he may stand. But to this day 
he acknowledges that he stands by grace alone. 


CHAPTER III. 


E women of our Union believe 
most positively that this Gospel 
temperance work can succeed 
only so far as it is done in God’s 
name and by his power working 
through the agencies he employs. 
It has always been our custom 
to make not only the whole 
work but each separate case an 
especial subject of prayer in 
our regular meetings and in our closets at home. 

Our work had been going forward slowly, but 
in a manner which indicated plainly that the 
blessing of the Lord was on the effort. Men had 
been reached and saved, and comfort had been 
brought to many homes; ) r et there were men 
walking our streets, going out and in of saloons, 
spending time and money, regardless of all family 
and business and moral obligations, who seemed 
entirely beyond our reach. Some of these were 
marked men — men who had grown up with the 
city and who had sunk fortunes in its gutters ; 
men known of all the people because of their 
recklessness in sin and the stolid indifference 
with which they regarded all influences good 
and pure. 



3 * 


32 


Our Pledge Roll. 

There was a shop on one of the principal streets 
— a little, dingy shop — which was the headquar- 
ters of a gang of these men, and in this place, day 
after day, night after night, they spent themselves 
as well as their time, drinking untold quantities 
of beer, whiskey, and other decoctions of the pit, 
while wives and children needed food and cloth- 
ing; and the wild orgies that made night hideous 
in that vicinity cannot be described by this pen. 

We learned afterwards that the strangest expe- 
dients were resorted to by the frequenters of this 
place for the purpose of concealing the liquors 
from Mrs. Sherman, the wife of the owner of the 
shop, and also from the temperance women, 
whom, in their debauched mental condition, they 
looked upon with dread, actually living in hour- 
ly fear that “ Mrs. H and her confederates ” 

would enter the place and find their liquors. 
They kept their beer or whiskey for a time in an 
old tea-kettle, and then, thinking that we had dis- 
covered this fact, they resorted to a sprinkler, 
which was kept standing out by the back door as 
of no account whatever. 

One day Mrs. Sherman came into the rooms, 
and, after telling me how her husband drank and 
raved like a maniac when he came home, tearing 
curtains, breaking furniture, and driving the af- 
frighted family before him, said, with a look of 
appeal that went to my heart, “ I do wish you 
would go and see him and get him to sign the 
pledge.” 

“I do not think that would do,” I replied. 


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“ Just as soon as lie saw me he would know what 
I came for, and would brace himself for resist- 
ance ; don’t you know he would ? ” 

“Oh! I don’t know,” she sighed; “ I suppose 
he would. But what can we do? We can’t live 
so.” 

“ I will see what we can do; I think we will 
have to pray over it. I wish you could get him 
to come to the rooms some day.” 

“ He wouldn’t do that. He’ll keep away ; for 
he has an idea that you are after him now.” 

“ How is that ? ” 

“All the drinking men think so. Why, Phil 
and them men there think you are watching 
them and know just where they keep the liquor, 
and it plagues them awfully.” 

“Well, we are after them in our way. We 
want to help them away from the power of strong 
drink. I am going to bring this matter before 
the ladies of our Union, and we will together ask 
God to help us.” 

The poor woman looked as though she thought 
this would not do much good, but did not say 
anything really in reply, but after a moment said, 
“ But you will come over to my house, won’t 
you ? ” 

“I will; I will go and see you and your chil- 
dren, and perhaps the way may open for an ac- 
quaintance with your husband.” 

I did go to this home often after this, and 
found it a pleasant one. The surroundings were 
neat; the little parlor where we always sat was a 


34 


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very comfortable one, but the back of one of the 
chairs was gone. It was a handsome wreck as it 
stood under the window, the lace draping of which 
hung in strings, speaking loudly of the great curse 
which always broods darkly over the home cf the 
drunkard. 

One day when I went over I found fresh tokens 
of trouble, and learned that INI r. Sherman had 
come home the night before in a terrible condi-^ 
tion — brought home by his horse, which drew the 
buggy, guided by instinct, while his insensible 
master lay across the seat, with one foot hanging 
out over the wheel. His foot was injured so he 
was not able to draw on his boot, and he was a 
prisoner in the kitchen, and was in a generally 
“used-up” condition. 

Mrs. Sherman seemed to think all things favor- 
able for a quick conquest of her husband, and, 
after telling me these things as we sat in the par- 
lor, she said in a tremulous whisper, “ And now 
come out and see him.” 

“I will, if he will see me,” I replied; “but I 
cannot force myself into his presence. I should 
only destroy all chance of future good. Go ask 
him if he will allow me to go out and talk with 
him.” 

She went out with doubt expressed in every 
movement, and I was not surprised to hear 
through the closed door a positive “No/” so 
emphasized as to close the question at once. His 
wife returned, sad and troubled, to the parlor, 
and soon we saw him go hobbling past the wijot- 


Our Pledge Roll 35 

dow into the street, so afraid was lie that I would 
go out to see him anyhow. 

The distress of this wife was enough to touch 
the hardest heart, and from that day her cause was 
our own. 

The matter of this shop was made an especial 
subject of prayer. We prayed that God would 
bring his own Spirit to this work, and in some 
way lead these men within the circle of our in- 
fluence. 

One day a son of Mr. Sherman — and, by the 
way, he had three fine, manly sons and a beautiful 
daughter, all standing nobly by their mother in 
her trouble — came to me upon the same errand, 
to ask me to do something for his father, who was 
going from bad to worse. He said his father evi- 
dently expected we would do something; that he 
talked about the “temperance women” almost 
constantly, and seemed almost in a rage about us. 
I promised the young man I would do the first 
thing that seemed advisable to be done. 

After the young man had gone I sat thinking 
over this sad case, and suddenly the purpose was 
formed to write this man a letter. I at once took 
up a pen and wrote. 

I told him how I appreciated his sons and 
daughter, and believed that the father of such 
children should be a sober man. And then I 
threw all the power I could command into a 
short but strong appeal to him to reform. I sent 
the letter, over my own name, winged with prayer, 
and faith,, knowing, however, that the power of 


36 


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God would be tested, for this man was a pro- 
fessed infidel — a bold advocate of his creed of un- 
belief. 

The day passed and the next flight in earnest 
supplication. With the spirit of the woman who 
brought her demoniac child to Jesus, I cried, 
“ Lord, help me ! ” for I felt, if these men were not 
now reached by the Spirit of God, I myself was 
not helped. It had become a personal matter be- 
tween my own soul and God. 

The next day, as I sat in the rooms, busy at my 
writing-table, I heard a knock at the door, which 
was a very unusual thing. I went to the door, 
and there stood Mr. Sherman with my letter in 
his hand. He was drunk — not so as to stagger, 
but drunk. He met me with a profound bow, and 
said in a military accent : 

“ Can you tell me where I might find a lady by 
the name of Mrs. H ?” 

“ I am Mrs. H ,” I replied ; “ will you come 

in, sir? ” 

He stepped in like a man marching to martial 
music, saying : 

“ And my name is Philip Sherman.” And hold- 
ing up the envelope of the letter, and running the 
index finger along the line of the address, he add- 
ed : “ And do you see how they write my name?” 

His tone was stern and had a slight flavor of 
anger. I replied quickly : 

“ Yes, I see ; and it is a good honest name, and 
should be. a sober one.” 

. “ Yes, yes, madam, that’s true!” he replied, 


Our Pledge Roll. 37 

taking a seat; “and that is what I came to talk 
to you about.” 

“ 1 shall be very glad to talk with you, sir,” I 
replied, taking a chair near him. 

He began to talk rapidly and in measured sen- 
tences, with the tone of one scanning verse. Much 
that he said was incoherent, like the talk of a 
drunken man; and yet it was clearly to be seen 
that a good, honest, manly purpose of reforma- 
tion was growing in some sweet, clean spot in his 
heart. After rambling over a wide field, through 
which I followed him as well as I might, he said-r 

“ There are four of us — wretches, vagabonds, 
hard old fellows, you know. We have talked it 
all over, and are coming up here to see you about 
that pledge business. I got this letter, so I came 
to-day ; just got it out ol the office. The rest are 
coming with me, coming to sign— to sign away our 
liberty , you know.” And he winked over toward 
the saloon across the way, and laughed a short, 
quick laugh that was very suggestive. 

Soon after he took his leave in the same courtly, 
ceremonious manner as he entered, assuring me 
that he would come soon again with the other 
“ vagabonds.” 

This was on Thursday, the day of the regular 
meeting of the Woman’s Christian Temperance 
Union, and after Mr. Sherman left I began to 
count the moments before the ladies would begin 
to gather in ; for while I thanked God, rejoiced, 
and took courage, yet I trembled before the strange 
influence that was coming with the answer to our 


33 


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prayers; and, with a sense of utter helplessness, I 
again went into my room to lay this matter be- 
fore the Lord. I never remember at any previous 
time of my life so terrible a realization of the con- 
flict between the opposing forces of heaven and 
hell for human souls as I experienced that day. 

About half-past two o’clock Mrs. Woodruff, the 
brave President of our Union, came in. I told her 
all that had passed, and we knelt together and 
asked God to send his own Spirit into our midst 
that day to subdue all things unto himself. 

A large number of ladies gathered that after- 
noon, and before the opening of the meeting I 
stated the case and said : 

“ We will probably be interrupted by the com- 
ing in of these men, and let me beg of you to pray 
as never before, and be ready, whenever I shall 
give the word, to sing 

“ ‘ There is a fountain filled with blood.’ ” 

It was evident during the opening services of 
the meeting that all hearts were heavy with sup- 
pressed excitement and vague expectation, with a 
touch of fear and awe. And as we look back to 
that day we can see that the movements of these 
events took place from first to last with the pre- 
cision of a drama, as if in obedience to some unseen 
controlling hand, and they left impressions upon 
us that can never be forgotten. 

The meeting was only just opened when we 
were silenced by the same sharp rap on the door 
which surprised me in the morning. “ They arc 


39 


Our Pledge Roll. 

come,” I said. The faces of the ladies grew pale. 
1 stepped quickly to the door and found Mr. 
Sherman in waiting alone. He was still half 
drunk, and appeared surprised and confused at 
finding the room filled with ladies, and addressed 
me in the same ceremonious manner as at first : 

“ Can you tell me where I might find a lady by 
the name of Mrs. H ?” 

“ I am Mrs. H . Will you come in ?” 

He entered with the same military step and air, 
advancing to the centre of the room, and, with a 
grandiloquent manner and gesture which was 
suggestive of several Fourths of July, said : 

“ I have marshalled my forces, and we are 
marching on to the combat.” 

“ Where are they ? ” I asked with as matter-of- 
fact a tone as I could command. 

“ At the foot of the stairs, madam.” 

“ Will you be seated and wait, or go down for 
them?” 

“ I shall go down and fetch them up.” And he 
bowed himself out of the door, which I closed 
quickly, and turning to the ladies, who sat with 
white faces and wet eyes before me, I said, “ Pray, 
pray, every woman of you, as you never pra}’ed 
before! ” And every head dropped, while the air 
was dense with the atmosphere of supplication, as 
the sound of feet, heavy and measured, ascending 
the stairs strangely moved us all. 

Remember, dear reader, that this was the very 
first experience which very many of these women 
had ever had with the reality of drunkenness; 


40 


Our Pledge Roll. 


and that it was also an answer directly from the 
Lord to the prayers they had been offering so 
long, as they had taken upon their own hearts the 
burden of others’ sorrows — the sorrows of women 
who lived in the very shadow of the valley of 
death. 

While we waited the command “ Halt ! ” was 
given just outside the door beside which I stood. 

I opened it, and there stood Mr. Sherman, a small, „ 
wiry man, in command of his “ forces ” — viz., three 
stalwart men, all gra}'-haired veterans in the ranks 
of sin, bearing upon every feature scars of the 
unequal warfare in which souls are slain. 

The scene would have been ludicrous in the 
extreme but for its solemn import. But not one 
of those ladies thought of smiling as again, with 
boyish authority, came the command : “ File 
right — forward, march ! ” And like school-boys 
on the drill those old men marched in, obeying 
promptly the orders which came from time to 
time, until they were seated in the chairs placed 
for them, when Mr. Sherman struck an attitude 
in the centre of the room near the table, as if to 
make a speech. But I gave the word to the 
ladies to sing, and the grand old hymn, that had 
never seemed so appropriate before, arose on 
their trembling, tearful tones, freighted with all 
of faith and Christly love a woman’s heart could 
hold. 

While they were singing one dear woman 
with the whitest lips came and whispered in my 
ear : 


Our Pledge Roll. 41 

“ Don’t you think you had better call a police- 
man ? ” 

41 Oh ! no,” I said ; “ we will let the Holy Spirit 
do police duty here this afternoon.” And her 
faith at once responded with a look of strength 
born of trust in God. She returned to her seat 
and took up a strain of the hymn. 

The men sat and listened with astonishment first, 
then with tender emotions breaking over lip and 
eyes. As soon as the hymn closed Mrs. Wilkins, 
our little treasurer, said : “ Let us pray.” 

We all knelt that time, and such a prayer — full 
of the old crusade fire — as she poured out of her 
soul we shall never forget; and when we arose 
from our knees we saw the faces of the men wet 
with tears, while every feature expressed contri- 
tion and sincerity. 

Mr. Sherman had thrown himself during prayer 
across the long reading-table beside which he 
had been standing, and now arose quietly and 
seated himself beside his comrades, evidently 
having forgotten the speech he intended to make. 

I turned, and, addressing one, a large man with 
a long gray beard, who seemed more nearly sober 
than the others, I said : “ Gentlemen, Mr. Sher- 
man came this morning and told me you were 
coming, and for what purpose, which is to sign 
the pledge. Am I right, Mr. Collins?” 

“ You are, madam,” he replied with the courte- 
ous manner of a real gentleman. 

“ Very well ; I will read the pledge, and you can 
step forward to the table and write your names.” 


4 2 


Our Pledge Roll. 


After the pledge was read, one — a man evi- 
dently considerably under the influence of liquor, 
an old man — came quickly forward, and, taking 
the pen, said : 

“ 1 am the oldest of these vagabonds, and so 
must sign first. ” 

He wrote his name with a good deal of care, 
and handed the pen to Mr. Collins, who came 
next in order. So, one after another, according 
to their respective ages, they came forward and 
wrote their names to the total abstinence pledge 
to which was appended a prayer, 

“ Lord help me ! ” 

I told them this latter part of the pledge was 
the most important of all, and exhorted them to 
make this prayer their own. They listened re- 
spectful^, although Mr. Sherman explained that 
they were “ all infidels — never prayed — didn’t be- 
lieve in Jesus.” This was said simply by way of 
apology, as the tone and manner indicated, not as 
a boast. 

After all had signed Mr. Sherman exclaimed : 
“ Now where is the bottle?” 

“Oh! sure enough,” replied Mr. Swails. “I 
left it on the bench in the shop.” 

“ Well, then, go and get it. W e’ve got to have 
that bottle ; this thing has got to be done up 
right.” 

So Mr. Swails went out after the bottle, and 
while he was gone the ladies passed around among 
the men, and shook them by the hand, and talked 
to them, and encouraged them in the new life they 


Our Pledge Roll. 


43 


had begun ; and Philip Sherman delivered the 
speech which he had evidently prepared for the 
occasion — a speech which could never be remem- 
bered with gravity, but which at the time did not 
provoke even a smile. 

Mr. Sw’ails soon returned with the bottle, a 
pint whiskey-flask, in his hand, and as he came 
towards me, holding it out at arm’s length, every 
person in the room instinctively arose and stood 
with solemnity on their faces, many with tears in 
their eyes. 

“ This bottle,” said Mr. Swails, “ was full, but 
now it is empty. We four vagabonds took our 
last drink together out of it before we started for 
the Temperance Rooms to sign the pledge, and we 
agreed that the empty bottle should be presented 
to you.” 

I took it, and was about to say something out 
of the fulness of my heart, when the old man 
whose name was written first stepped forward, 
and, with his hand uplifted, said in a stage whis- 
per : 

“ Now let there be silence in heaven for the 
space of half an hour.” 

And we were silent. There was something 
about this event which seemed to bring us in such 
sympathy with the divine plan of human redemp- 
tion that it was very natural for us to feel that 
heaven was moved, that angelic choirs might even 
be hushed a moment for very joy. The silence 
was broken by this same old man saying in a sub- 
dued tone: 


44 


Our Pledge Roll. 


“ Sing ‘ Mary to the Saviour’s tomb.’ ” 

We sang it; and then one and another called 
for old hymns, some of them very old ; for these 
men, in this hour of the coming-in of a better 
hope, seemed to be carried back to the very cradle 
songs their own mothers sang. Some hymns called 
for were not known by us younger women, but 
we had among us one old lady of over “ threescore 
and ten,” and she lifted up her voice, full of quavers 
and yet sweet, and sang while her auditors wept. 
At last Mr. Sherman bethought himself of a part 
of the ceremony not yet performed, and said : 

“ Here, Mrs. H , that bottle has got to have 

a label. You write it, for my hand trembles some 
vet.” 

mf 

So I took pen and paper and wrote as he dic- 
tated : 


“ PRESENTED TO MRS. H 

ON THE 14TH DAY OF OCTOBER, 1874, 

UPON THE OCCASION OF THE SIGNING OF THE 
PLEDGE 

BY 

CHARLES ROBINSON, 

J. A. COLLINS, 

PHILIP SHERMAN, 

EDWARD SWAILS.” 

The names were written by the men themselves, 
and the paper glued and attached to the bottle, 
which was placed upon a bracket on the wall ; 
and it yet stands upon the Reform Club wall as 
a monument of one of the most remarkable events 
cf our crusade. 


Our Pledge Roll. 


45 


Soon after these men took their leave quietly 
and soberly, without any ceremony, going- out to 
fight the hardest fight that comes in a lifetime. 

We had long felt the need of aii organization 
for reformed men — of a brotherhood through the 
agency of which they might help each other 
as they could not be helped by others. 1 had 
already made an appointment for a meeting of 
the reformed men for the next (Friday) even- 
ing at the rooms, for the purpose of organizing 
a Reform Club on the plan already at work in 
Maine and New Hampshire. This was to be a 
meeting of men alone, and I informed the subjects 
of this sketch of this appointment, and secured 
their promise to be “ on hand ” and enter into the 
work of organizing such a club. 


CHAPTER IV. 


D now it will be necessary to go back 
a little in point of time, to gather up 
other links in the chain of this narra- 
tive, that it may be complete. 

One day when Mrs. Sherman came 
to see me, some time before her hus- 
band thought of reformation, she 
said : 

“ Mrs. IT , you ought to go and 

see Frank Seeley’s folks. He spends the most of 
his time over at Sherman’s shop, and the children 
are actually hungry, I do believe.” 

“ Where do they live?” I asked. 

“Away out on High Street. You get onto the 
street, and folks will tell you where the house is.” 

“ I will go and see them.” 

So on the Tuesday before Mr. Sherman first 
came to the rooms Mrs. Woodruff took me in her 
carriage to find this family. 

On our way out we talked of how we could ap- 
proach the wife, how we should introduce our- 
selves, what we should say, and how she would 
be likely to receive us. For we had yet to learn 
that the wives of drinking men were looking 
towards us with hope and expectation of deliver- 

46 



Our Pledge Roll. 47 

ance ; we had yet to learn that we needed no in- 
troduction in going into these houses. 

We found the place — a tiny white cot with con- 
siderable neatness in its exterior — and, hitching 
the horse, went a little timidly to the door and 
rapped our signal. The door was opened by a 
little, sad-faced woman with a baby in her arms, 
who spoke my name at once in a tone which 
meant so much, and invited us in. 

“ Oh ! I have wanted to see you so many times,” 
she said. “ I am so glad you have come ! ” 

While we talked three little children with old 
faces stood and looked first at one and then at 
the other, with wonder in their wide-open eyes 
and intelligent anxiety in every feature. 

We heard the same old story that has been so 
often told of ruin by drink. But in everything she 
said Mrs. Seeley undertook, with wifely loyalty, 
to separate her husband from the drunkard. 

“ Frank is a good man but for the drink,” she 
said repeatedly. “ You see this house — he built 
it all. And just look at his books ; they belong to a 
scholar. He used to teach school, and has done 
business for men at good salaries; but when the 
drink gets in he an’t Frank no more.” 

This woman, sitting there surrounded by her 
four children, in the one room that, supplemented 
by a seven-by-nine bedroom and the tiniest pantry, 
supplied her with the framework of a home, and 
with nothing but poverty and sorrow for the fur- 
nishing — all because of the drinking habits of her 
husband— she still* with a quiet, womanly dignity, 


4 8 


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shielding him from all expressions of blame, was 
an object to move our hearts as we sat and looked 
and listened, and tried to make her feel the warmth 
of our sympathy through all her cheerless sur- 
roundings. 

Talk of heroic women ! These women in such 
homes, with their arms full of children, are living 
lives of such heroism as history or romance never 
portrayed. 

Mrs. Seeley had the same idea expressed by 
Mrs. Sherman, that if we could see her husband 
he might be induced to reform ; and I said, in reply 
to her request, that she might say to Mr. Seeley 
that I wished him to come to the Temperance 
Rooms at seven o’clock that evening — as Tuesday 
evening was mine for keeping the rooms open — and 
I should expect him ; would like to have a good 
talk with him. 

I knew if he accepted this invitation his re- 
formation would be the probable result ; if he did 
not, we could not do much for him at present. 
She said he might not be home — sometimes was 
not for days together — but she would give him 
the word ; was afraid he would not go anyhow ; 
thought if I could only come and “ catch him at 
home.” But I soon convinced her how useless 
this would be ; that unless he became sufficiently 
interested in the matter of reform to seek the 
means, nothing could be really accomplished. 

We left with a promise between us three to 
pray that this man might be. led of God to begin 
a new life ; and the tremulous, tearful face of that 


Our Pledge Roll. 49 

woman as she stood at the door and bade us good- 
by can never be forgotten. 

That evening, as I sat in the rooms wondering 
if my invitation would be regarded by Mr. Seeley, 
the door opened and a fine-looking, gentlemanly- 
appearing stranger entered. I arose, and was 
about to give the usual words of welcome to a 
stranger, when he said : 

“ I believe my wife made an engagement for 
me here at this time.” 

“Mr. Seeley?” I questioned, extending my 
hand. 

“ The same,” he replied with a slight bow as 
he shook my hand, and continued : “ I have come 
down to sign that pledge.” 

“That is good,” I said heartily; “you must 
have been thinking it over to-day, then ? ” 

“ Yes ; and my wife is very anxious I should do 
so. And I know I must stop drinking or go to 
ruin ; got pretty near there now.” 

“ The pledge of total abstinence is a good be- 
ginning, then, for a man in your fix, and I shall 
be very glad to give it you.” 

“ Well, I am going to take it; but there is a 
man I want to go and bring to sign with me.” 

“ Better sign, and then go for him.” 

“ No ; it is an agreement between us. I will go 
for him and come back soon.” 

So he left the room, and I waited in great anx- 
iety, fearing that something might happen to turn 
his -resolution. 

Soon after Mr. Seeley had gone another stranger 


50 


Our Pledge Roll . 


entered, an Irishman, with a pleasant, honest face, 
but very much bloated with drink, being 1 con- 
siderably “under the influence” then. 

He stood in the door a moment, looking around 
the room, and then said : 

“ l was looking for a man, madam ; excuse me.” 

“ All right, sir !” I said cheerily. “ For whom 
were you looking?” 

“ For Frank Seeley, madam.” 

“ He was here a moment ago, but went out to 
find a man who had promised to come here with 
him.” 

“ Well, I’m the boy, madam. I waited for him, 
as he promised to come for me, but thought I 
might find him here.” 

“ You better take a chair, then, and wait for 
him, for he said he should return soon.” 

“Well, I guess I’ll do the business I came for 
and go back to my shop. I came to sign the 
pledge. I’m under the influence of liquor now, 
madam, I am free to acknowledge it ; but I’m 
not drunk enough so but that I know what I am 
about, so I’ll sign the pledge ‘in a hurry and re- 
pent at leisure,’ as they said about the boy gone 
to get married.” 

I took down the roll and spread it out before 
him, and he began to examine the list, and be- 
came so much interested in talking about the men 
whom he knew whose names he found there that, 
just as I hoped, the time passed and Mr. Seeley 
returned before his friend had got ready to write 
his name* - ....... 


Our Pledge Roll. 


5 * 


Mr. Mulligan arose, and the two friends clasped 
hands over the pledge-roll a moment, and then, 
sitting down together, signed their names with 
the air of men in earnest, at least. 

And then, as they sat awhile, they began to talk 
about the temperance reform, and what they hoped 
from it, in a manner which astonished me. 1 
thought : “ Is it possible that drinking men, men 
in the saloons — for these men are but just out — 
have such an interest as this in the work we are 
trying to do ? Do they really look with hope of 
help and relief to the woman’s crusade ? ” 

And during the hour that these two sat and 
talked with others who came in I learned a truth 
which gave me new inspiration in my work — viz., 
that the drinking men are our friends, and that 
the question with them is not if they would like to 
reform, but that it is simply a question of ways 
and means. “ How can I?” or “Can I?” “Is 
there any hope for me ? ” are the statements of the 
problem upon which hangs more of hope or de- 
spair, of life or death, of hell or heaven, than 
human thought can compass, or even grasp. 

It was during this evening’s talk that the idea 
of a Reform Club first took a definite form in my 
mind as an absolute necessity for these men, and 
before they left for home I had proposed this to 
them, and had appointed the Friday night of that 
week as the time for them to come together and 
besrin such an organization. 

Mr. Seeley and his friend Mulligan were the 
first of the “ gang ” whose headquarters were in 


52 Our Pledge Roll. 

Mr. Sherman’s shop who began the work of re- 
form by signing our pledge-roll. 

The Friday night appointment was kept, and a 
Reform Club organized with seven members all 
told, to meet every Friday night, for the purpose 
of mutual help in the better life they were trying 
to lead. 

When the people of our city learned what had 
happened in our little circle of influence and work 
they began to open their eyes, and the question 
was often asked, “ What was done to get those 
men ? Flow did Mr. Sherman, Collins, Seele}q 
and all those come to sign the pledge? ” 

To these questions we had but one answer : 
“ ‘ It is the Lord’s doing and marvellous in our 
eyes.’ We only prayed — for there was nothing 
else we could do — and this is the result. W e could 
not go after these men — they were out of our 
reach ; but the Lord brought them to us, and now, 
by his help, we intend to hold them.” 

“ Well, it’ll be a good thing, if they will only 
stick.” 

After this had been said to us about the fiftieth 
time we began to feel it, like the blowing of a 
stead}^ north wind right off from the icebergs of a 
frozen-up faith, and a spirit of resentment against 
this imputation came up ; and one day, as a Chris- 
tian man who had come in to talk matters over 
had said of these men, “ If they only keep to it,” 
I said : 

“ Why do you imply such a thing as failure in 
these men ? ” 


Our fledge Roll. 


53 


“ Why ? Because the chances are ten to one they 
go to drinking again in a little while ; but if you 
keep them sober a week you have done a good 
work. Such men can’t reform. Why, there’s 
Collins has spent twenty thousand, dollars in this 
city for rum; and just look at him — a fit subject 
for spontaneous combustion ! Now, what is his 
chance ? ” 

“ Well, for pity’s sake don’t say so ; do have a 
little confidence in them. What chance have 
they, sure enough, if Christian men who should 
help them are going to talk this way and pile up 
things to hinder them ? ” 

“ Hinder them ! Why I wouldn’t put a*straw in 
the way of one of them for the world. But as for 
having any confidence in the permanence of their 
reformation, can’t say I have.” 

“ Then,’’ I replied, “ go home and get on your 
knees before God, and ask him to give you more 
of his Spirit. You can at least have confidence 
in their need of reformation and in the sincerity of 
their efforts, and that is all we claim for them — it 
is all they claim for themselves; and you can at 
least help them with words of good cheer and 
help us with words of faith, and remember from 
this time that the Temperance Rooms are no place 
for talk like this about our boys. No one can 
come in here and breathe a doubt about their in- 
tegrity in this work of personal reform. Every 
influence of this place must be such as shall give 
them positive help. It is our purpose to make it 
just next to impossible for them to fail.” 


CHAPTER V. 



FEW days after Mr. Sherman and 
his friends signed the pledge Mrs. 
Sherman came over to the rooms and 
informed me that Mr. Collins was 
sick with delirium tremens in his 
room across the river ; had been 
very sick over Sunday, and her hus- 
band and some others had been tak- 
ing care of him. He had no family ; 
his wife and only child, a daughter, had left him 
years before and gone East, and he kept bachelor’s 
hail. 

I immediately accompanied her over to see 
about this matter, and found him indeed sick, but 
quiet, and probably over the worst, although very 
weak. I sat down beside him, and talked to him 
of the new life he had begun and the hope held 
out to him in the Gospel ; and he listened with an 
eager look which showed plainly that his soul was 
hungry for the bread of life. I knelt and offered 
prayer for him, and, ascertaining that he had no 
one to look after him and supply his needs, has- 
tened to report his case to the ladies of the Union. 

He was sick for some days, and once his attend- 
ant thought he would have to have a little liquor 


Our Pledge Roll. 


55 


to quiet his suffering; but when it was proposed 
he answered : “ No, never ! I promised that lady 
that I would never touch it again, and I will not 
if I die for it. When a woman will get down on 
her knees and pray God to bless me, I am going 
to be a better man.” 

The ladies of the Woman’s Christian Tempe- 
rance Union visited Mr. Collins and cared for him 
until he was able to get out and come to the 
rooms, when he used to often come in and spend 
an hour. One day when he came in, finding me 
alone, he said : 

“ Mrs. H , I want to ask a favor of you : will 

you write a letter for me ? ” 

“ Certainly, with pleasure,” I replied as I took 
up my pen. 

“ I want my wife and daughter to know that I 
am trying to do better. They went home to her 
folks some sixteen years ago, and I have never 
seen them since. I never expect to see them, but 
I want them to know — ” 

This was said in a low tone, just above a whis- 
per, but with perfect calmness, while my heart 
seemed to fill my throat and my eyes were blinded 
with tears. How much of human sorrow and dis- 
appointment, how much of the keenest anguish of 
utter loneliness, and almost despair, was indexed 
by these quietly-spoken words of the old man be- 
fore me ! He sat opposite me at the long reading- 
table, a story in himself : his hair and beard were 
almost white, the latter flowing down over his 
breast, while his whole face was almost scarlet, 


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spotted with purplish blotches — the hideous mark 
of the beast that has been set upon the cheek and 
forehead of so many of our strong men. 

Sixteen years of separation, of shame and sor- 
row, and now it was my great privilege to send 
out into this night of darkness and desolation the 
white-winged courier of a better hope. “ But 
what would its message be to them ? ” I asked my- 
self again and again as I wrote a faithful record of 
the effort for a better life of the man who had 
been so much to them. It must make them glad, at 
least, I thought ; and I thanked God that for a day 
like this he had called the women of the Woman’s 
Christian Temperance Union to the kingdom. 

That letter was written right out of my heart, 
sent with many hopes, and then we began to 
watch for a reply. Weeks passed, in which ex- 
pectation hardened down into anxiety. Mr. Col- 
lins would come in almost daily and say : “ Any 
letter?” By and by the question changed its 
form : “ No letter yet ? ” with the rising inflection 
that made the words pathetic indeed. 

I wrote again, unknown to him, and at last the 
reply came, written in a regular, lady-like hand, 
and couched in terms that at once enlisted my 
heart for that side of the house as well. Every 
line breathed of joy at the beginnings of reforma- 
tion in one who could never be forgotten, and of 
gratitude for the agencies employed ; and the 
letter closed with a promise to write to Mr. Col- 
lins, and a request that we keep them informed of 
his progress in the new life. 


Our Pledge Roll. 57 

The next day Mr. Collins came in, and by the 
first glance at his face I knew he had his letter. 

“ Mrs. H he said, “ I want to see you a 

moment this way.” 

So I arose and followed him into the little par- 
lor, as there were several persons in the reading- 
room. He closed the door and took from his 
breast-pocket an envelope, and, drawing forth a 
photograph of a lovely girl of about twenty-three 
years, laid it on my hand, while his eyes moist- 
ened with the dew of unshed tears. 

He could say nothing, neither could I ; but we 
looked at the fair young face together, and I dare 
say the same thought was in the mind of each : 

“ Oh ! if it hadn’t been for drink.” 

I could see opening up before us both as we 
looked upon that picture a vision of what his life 
and home might have been that day, and my very 
soul longed to roll back the tide of years and set 
the date of this reform back — back ten, twenty, 
fifty, a hundred years — far enough so that its 
sweet, fresh current might have cleansed the 
channels of life of the last trace of this great curse, 
which has so corrupted even its sweetest springs 
that to-day it is almost literally true that “ there 
is no place clean.” 

The story of this man’s life would fill a volume 
in itself, but for the present suffice it to say that 
he stands true to his purpose, but still alone, his 
face changing every month more and more, grow- 
ing younger, taking on the real impress of his 
manly integrity ; and we who know him can but 


58 


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feel that the beautiful girl who is his daughter, or 
the stately lady who is his wife, would not blush 
to stand on either side of this man to-day and ac- 
knowledge him as their very own. Yet they walk 
apart, all through drink — they there, he here, a 
thousand miles and so many years between. God 
bring them together some time 1 


CHAPTER VI. 


HE changes wrought by this re- 
form were as noticeable over in 
the little dingy shop as anywhere 
else. 

The same men congregated 
there, but how different was the 
purpose of their coming to- 
gether, how different the atmo- 
sphere of the place, how different 
the language used ! Then this 
was a place that the city marshal had marked as a 
breeder of disturbance, a place that sober people 
dreaded after night, a place of blasphemies and 
noise and sin. Then they met together to plot 
mischief; now to plan for the extension of the 
good work of saving men. Then it was the 
“ Headquarters of the Vagabonds,” as they called 
'themselves; now it was “Headquarters of Re- 
formed Men.” Then it was a place in which 
curses were heaped upon the names of the “ tem- 
perance women ” ; now it was almost a shrine 
where the choicest blessings were invoked on, and 
honest, loyal hearts paid reverence to, the Wo- 
man’s Christian Temperance Union that almost 
amounted to worship. 



BO 


Go 


Our Pledge Roll \ 


Mr. Sherman was still quite pronounced in his 
infidelity, but was so loyal to the means by which 
he had been reached and led to begin the grand 
reformation of his life that he would not allow 
even the “ Gospel part ” of this temperance work to 
be spoken against ; and gradually through the years 
that have passed a slow and silent transformation 
has been going on, until he no longer professes and 
glories in his infidel ideas, but has taken the atti- 
tude of one ready to be taught, and has really 
espoused the cause of Gospel work, and is coming 
along toward a personal experience of salvation 
through Christ in and for himself. 

More of this matter further on. 

Soon after the presentation of the “ last bottle ” 
Mrs. Sherman came one day with the horse 
and carriage, which had been put into new 
shape, newly dressed with paint and varnish, and 
turned over, “any time at your service,” for tem- 
perance work, and we started out together to 
make calls — first upon Mrs. Seeley, Mrs. Robin- 
son, and Mrs. Swails, and afterward upon some 
others, if we had time. The atmosphere in and 
about these homes was like that of the first balmy 
days in spring— full of a hope of a good time, of 
freshness, and bloom, and fruit that was surely 
coming, if it was not all here yet. 

There were still abundant tokens of the dreary 
season of sorrow which had lasted all too long 
and had been relieved with so little of anything 
like joy or comfort, but there was a change some- 
where ; you could hardly tell where or in what it 


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61 


consisted, but it was there all the same. The chil- 
dren looked and acted more like children — not so 
old ; their faces were cleaner, the houses a little 
more tidy, and the rarest touch of resurrection 
power had left its seal upon the eyes, that had 
seemed like sepulchres of “ dead and gone ” faiths, 
and loves, and hopes, while sorrow kept a ceaseless 
watch. This was in a measure true of all these 
homes, but a strange influence seemed to prevail 
in that of Mr. S wails. 

We were cordially greeted by Mrs. S wails, who 
had her hands full of sewing, and whose room 
showed that hers was the life of housekeeper and 
sewing-woman combined. We began to talk as 
women do, and it did not take me long to discover, 
as soon as the name of her husband and the new 
order of things in his habits were mentioned, that 
there was something very much back of all her 
words, and that that something was not a source of 
gladness. At last she said, in reply to a remark of 
Mrs. Sherman’s in which she expressed her joy : 

“ Yes, if S wails only will keep it ; but he won’t 
— not a week.’’ 

“ Oh ! ” I said, “ you must have courage, and in 
that w T ay inspire him with strength to hold on.” 

“ Courage ! ” And the tone of contempt in which 
this was said was bitter as a woman’s tongue could 

drop. “ I tell you, Mrs. H , if you had been a 

drunkard’s wife as long as I have you would not 
talk ‘ courage ’ to me. I never can have courage 
again ; it has all been beaten and trampled out of 

9 9 

me. 


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I hardly knew what to say. If I had seen a 
sign of tears it would have been a help ; but she 
sat rocking back and forth, nervously picking the 
thread in her sewing with the point of her needle, 
while the hardest, coldest look I had ever seen 
covered everything of real womanliness in her ex- 
pression. 

At last I said : 

“ You profess to be a Christian ? ” 

“ Yes,” she answered softly. 

“ Have you never prayed for your husband’s 
reformation and salvation?” 

“ Yes, I used to; but it did no good, and I got 
worn out and gave it up.” 

“ You poor woman ! ” I said, for I began to un- 
derstand her and was touched. 

“ I do not know that I wonder so much,” I 
continued ; “ but it did do good for you to 
pray, and God has not forgotten your prayers; 
and so he has come in this crusade to answer 
you.” 

“ Think so? ” she asked in a doubting tone, yet 
softer than before. 

“ I am sure of it. This whole temperance work 
is the answer of God to the prayers and tears of 
just such wives as you. Not simply the prayers 
of crusade women are being answered ; but the 
prayers of women who have cried to God out of 
poverty, and cold, and hunger, and utter deso- 
lation, and have thought that all courage and faith 
have been trampled out, just as yours has been — 
women many of whom have almost forgotten that 


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63 


God is, who have lost all hope of any rest until 
death, and have ceased to care much about what 
comes after — ” 

“ I guess that means me,” she interrupted, turn- 
ing her face full toward mine, with a ghastly at- 
tempt at a smile. 

“ Well, God has not forgotten you, you see. He 
has heard and is come to deliver. It is just as it 
says in this tenth Psalm.’ 1 ’ And I opened my Bi- 
ble, and read and explained : “ ‘ He,’ the wicked, 
4 sitting in the lurking-places of the villages ’ to 
‘ murder the innocent ’ wives and little children — 
‘he,’ crouching and humbling himself, ‘ that the 
poor may fall by his strong ones, hath said in his 
heart, “ God hath forgotten ; he hideth his face ; he 
will never see it ” ’ if I do take means to draw that 
man in, and get his money, and send him home 
drunk and with nothing left to buy meat or bread 
with. * He hath said in his heart,' as he ‘ con- 
temned God,’ ‘Thou wilt not require it.’ Why, 
they seem to think that God is altogether such a 
one as they are. But listen to what the Book 
says : ‘ Thou hast seen it ; for thou beholdest mis- 
chief and spite, to requite it with thy hand.’ Oh! 
yes; God did see, and he made a record of it all, 
and he will requite it, and he will deliver the poor 
and needy, and such as have no friend to help. 
And now,” I added, as I saw a glint of tears un- 
der her eyelids, “ I charge you be of good cour- 
age. Much of your husband’s success depends 
upon you. Make your home pleasant as possible. 
Keep yourself cheerful and bright, and begin at 


6 4 


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once to pray for him again, and let him know it. 
Will you do this ? ” 

“ I will try,” she said faintly amid thick sobs. 

“Well, now, let us all kneel here together and 
ask God’s help.” 

And we did all kneel together, and I prayed for 
God’s blessing upon this wife, her husband, chil- 
dren, and their home; and never did the need of 
God’s help come more sensibly to my conscious- 
ness than then, as I realized how much was to be 
done to even make a place for the foundation of a 
true reformation to stand upon. 

There was much that was new to me in that 
woman’s despair; but it has since become an old 
story, as I have gone from home to home over 
which this shadow of death was hung, and often I 
have said to myself: “It is surely time for the 
Lord to come and show himself in some way.” 

Many and varied were the experiences that be- 
gan to come to us in our work from these days, 
and we began to become familiar with many phases 
of personal reformation which do not always ap- 
pear to observers. 

The manner in which the ladies of the Union 
stood by the “ boys ” and their families in those 
days is one of the things which prove that the 
Spirit of Christ is in his Gospel yet. And the 
work of the Reform Club, which had its begin- 
ning in the manner above related, and has gone on 
increasing in numbers and power, as these records 
will show, proves that God is in this work ; that it 
does embody the same Spirit ; that it has drunk of 


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6 5 


the same spiritual rock, which is Christ ; and that 
the Master does honor this stone, and has a place 
for it in his building, although it may have been 
disallowed by some who call themselves builders. 

There came a time when to be a “ reformed 
man ” and member of the Reform Club was to be 
spoken against, even by some professing to bear 
the name of Christ. But the time also came 
when this passed by, and when in the city of 
which I write the Reform Club was an acknow- 
ledged power in carrying forward the work of 
God for fallen humanity. 

There was a time when the Church and the Club 
stood almost in the attitude of belligerents, neither 
understanding the other ; but this passed by, and 
they came to recognize that they must each sup- 
plement the other, that they were too near of kin 
to separate their interests. 

The Last Bottle, standing upon its bracket in 
the rooms, became more and more an object of 
interest, and the words of Mr. Sherman came to 
have a deeper significance, as often he would say : 

“ That is my battery that I planted on the wall.” 


CHAPTER VII. 


HE purpose in writing this history 
is to give to those interested in 
the Gospel temperance reform 
the practice, methods, and results, 
about which so many questions 
are asked by letter and other- 
wise. 

I have chosen this form, believ- 
ing that these living annals will 
better serve the purpose than 
any mere theoretic statements could do. 

The suggestionof this pledge-roll narrative was 
first made by the “ boys ” themselves, one day 
in winter, a very cold, blustering day, as a large 
circle of them sat about the comfortable fire in 
the reading-room, 1 at my place, busy with pen 
and books, yet listening often to the personal re- 
miniscences that never lost their interest to me. 

At length Mr. Hunter — “ Charley ” — turned 
and said to me : 

“You must write up these things some time, 
Mrs. H 

“ That’s so,” responded several voices. 

“You must write up the history of the ‘Last 
Bottle,’ ” said Philip Sherman. 

“ Make a tract of it,” said one. 

65 



Our Pledge Roll. 


67 


“ There would be material and interest enough 
for a first-class novel, if you should go into the 
merits of the case,” said another. 

“ Would you boys be willing for me to write up 
the history of our ‘pledge-roll’?” I asked, as I 
opened the book and drew it towards me. 

“ I am willing you should use my experience, if 
it will do any good,” said Mr. Hunter. 

“ If the telling of my story would keep any one 
from drinking, or help any one to stop, or interest 
anybody in this work of reform, I should be glad to 
have it done,” said Henry Fraley. 

“And so would I,” “ That’s me,” “ And I,” “ I,” 
“ I,” went around the circle. 

“ Well, boys,” I answered, “ I am going to do it 
some time, if I live, and thank you for the sugges- 
tion.” 

Some time has been allowed to pass before be- 
ginning the pleasant work, for two reasons : first, 
a pressure of active work in the same field ; sec- 
ond, a desire that the growing fruit should ripen 
somewhat, and show what manner it is of, before 
it is passed to be “sampled.!’ 

When people speak of a man as “ reform- 
ed,” “saved,” his “appetite for strong drink de- 
stroyed,” I always want to ask : “ How long* since 
he began?” 

I have learned that a reformed man is not made 
in a day or by one touch of the Healer’s power. 
A man is spoken of as reformed as soon as he is 
pledged, whereas this is but the incipient stage — 
the very beginning. It is but the declaration of 


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independence, not liberty yet ; liberty he must 
fight for. The declaration is followed by months 
of warfare, ay, and years, with many chances of 
a mortal conflict, unless the Lord be secured as 
an ally, unless he be the captain. And then he 
does not do all the fighting in this case any more 
than in any other ; but he does give victory most 
gloriously in every skirmish and battle, if the sol- 
diers will but obey orders. 

One thing, however, is so true that we should 
publish it and keep it before the people for the 
sake of our young men, if for no other reason. A 
man does not tamper with strong drink during a 
term of the most susceptible years of his life, until 
the vital forces are all taken in possession by the 
enemy and held fast, and are being slowly destroy- 
ed — nerve, and tissue, and blood all corrupted by 
the demon Thirst — for nothing. 

There is hope for any man, if he will but start 
right ; but he cannot escape the inevitable results 
of the operation of alcoholic poison on his physi- 
cal constitution. 

Some claim, or have claimed, that if a man be 
truly converted he will suffer no more from the 
demand of the physical system for its accustomed 
stimulant. I started out in this work with this 
supposition, and when I began to learn the truth 
from daily experiences with reformed men I was 
amazed, and for a time disappointed. But I knew 
that God’s grace must do all that God pledges it to 
accomplish, and I began to suspect that we had been 
reasoning from, and basing prayers and expecta- 


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69 


tions upon, conclusions drawn from false premises, 
and I was led to study into the relation of God 
and his agencies to this matter ; and the result is 
that I find we have been taking the grace of sal- 
vation outside of its sphere of action entirely, and 
thus degrading it in the eyes of those who must 
be saved by it or lost for ever. We have taken it 
out just as far from its own place as though we 
should claim that any man who while drunk had 
lost a leg, or arm, or eye could have them restor- 
ed, if he would but come to God and trust him. 

The converting grace of God, by the renewing 
of the Holy Spirit — the new birth — will so change 
not only the purpose but the nature of a man that 
he shall hate, ay loathe, all the associations of the 
saloon and the drink itself ; it will beget and 
strengthen in him a determination to abstain, come 
what will, and will hold him to this determination 
in spite of the world , full of saloons ; and the flesh , 
that cries out through every tissue, and nerve, and 
drop of poisoned blood for drink ; and the devil , 
who plies all his arts to tempt and seduce. But 
the man will suffer all the same from the pangs of 
the tormenting demand of outraged nature until 
she shall have time, by natural functions, to rid 
herself of the poison, and the man returns to a 
normal condition by the proper adjustment of 
the physical forces. 

The appetite for strong drink is a thing of the 
nerves, and blood, and tissues. Through these 
media, of course, it affects soul and spirit. But 
the spirit may be “born again” long before the 


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slow processes of nature can make the broken-down 
body to correspond ; sometimes it never can do it, 
but will have to wait for the touch of resurrection 
powers and a spiritual body. It is no proof that 
a man is still unconverted because he has a hard 
fight with the appetite for strong drink. 

I believe it is of the utmost importance to re- 
formers and the reformed that the true relation 
of grace to this work be understood. You teach „ 
a man that, if he is truly converted, the appetite 
for strong drink must of necessity be removed. 
He is converted. He makes an honest surrender 
of himself to God and starts out ; he feels no de- 
sire for drink (no man does for a time after he 
stops its use), and he is emboldened to proclaim 
that “ God has taken it all away ; that he is for ever 
free.” He goes on for a week, two weeks, three 
weeks, sometimes for many weeks, bearing the 
same testimony, when suddenly, with scarcely any 
warning, some day you are shocked to hear of his 
fall. You think: “Can I have been mistaken in 
that man’s sincerity ? Was he not converted ? He 
gave good evidences. How much real power 
seemed to accompany his words of testimony, of 
exhortation, his prayers ! What is the meaning of 
this?” 

You seek him out. You find it very difficult to 
get near him ; but if you do succeed and get him 
to listen to you, you find it almost impossible to 
inspire him with any hope or confidence, and, if 
you speak of God’s help, he will say, as many have 
said : 


“ There is nothing there for me. I have been 
deceived. God is either no God or I was never 
converted. If I was not converted I never can 
be, for I did the best I could. I trusted , but what 
good did it do? I fell in spite of God and my 
own resolution, I hardly know how. There is 
nothing any where for a man like me to tie to ; I 
am lost.” 

Now, what was the trouble? The failure was 
not in God’s grace nor in the sincerity of the man, 
but in an unsound doctrine— a simply human 
claim for God’s grace which he has nowhere 
seconded : in claiming that it will do a work 
which is just as much out of its province as to 
straighten a crooked bone or eye, or to hew 
stone and draw lumber to supply the needy with 
a home. The bone or eye may be straightened, 
the stone hewn, the house builded, if the right 
means are employed ; so the man may be carried 
over the crisis of his reformation, if God’s good 
and abundant grace can find a channel ; if his 
Spirit can find a medium in some loving, patient 
Christian heart and hand that will furnish the 
practical help just at the time it is needed — in the 
man’s hour of extremity. 

In the theories of some reformers and evange- 
lists, who have known such men during the first 
few days of their new life, they are “free,” “ saved,” 
as good as new after long years of self-destruction ; 
and it has been thus entered upon the records. 
But in the every-day practice of those whose 
work it is to look after them, follow them during 


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the months that are filled with conflict, it is a dif- 
ferent thing. The day of fiery trial is sure to 
come, is liable to come almost any time ; and un- 
less some visible, reliable agent of the true Gospel 
spirit is on the alert, watching for signs of the 
coming conflict, in several cases out of every ten 
the man will be taken captive by the “ strong man 
armed,” and fall under the power of a thirst that 
destroys, for a time, the moral sensibility and re- 
sponsibility, just as a sudden attack ol fever or 
delirium would do. 

This statement is not theory, but the result of a 
personal experience of four years in the same 
place, amid the same circle of reformed men, in 
daily association with them, whose work was be- 
gun and carried forward under my own eye. 

I learned how people felt when they said of a 
“new man”: “Yes, if he will only stick.” Al- 
though I never had any sympathy with the doubt- 
ing spirit concerning their efforts, yet I learned to 
reckon chances and gauge the prospects of suc- 
cess by certain indefinable tokens ; and when I 
once understood a case it was the one study to 
know how to apply the requisite power, how to 
calculate for overcoming all friction, that the pos- 
sibilities of failure might be reduced to the mini- 
mum fraction, and the probabilities of success 
brought up somewhere near the point of assurance. 

Once, in conversation with a Christian man who 
believed fully in the “ total-destruction theory ” 
for this appetite in a converted man, after I had 
given him my view of the case he said : 


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“ Your faith falls short ; that is all.” 

I reviewed the whole matter in the light of this 
assertion, and, with added experience, reaffirm 
what I then said, and will only add that no amount 
of faith will brace up a wrong position ; and in 
these days of earnest, practical work and general 
seeking after best ways and means, it behooves us 
to look matters squarely in the face, accept the 
situation just as it is, and, while we trust God to 
do his part thoroughly and so it will stay done, 
see to it that we do ours. 

This record would be incomplete if the name of 
Henry Fraley were forgotten or omitted. He was 
my neighbor, living alone with his widowed 
mother. I soon learned that he was an almost 
constant drinker, and used often to see him going 
home on the run — his habitual gait when under 
the influence of liquor. He was reported to be 
rather a “ singular fellow,” and this enlisted my in- 
terest ; and I began to watch for him to pass, to 
see whether he had been drinking or not, and I 
soon became deeply in earnest in his case, and be- 
gan to pray for him. 

He owned an orchard which joined the premi- 
ses occupied by me, and used often to be about 
some work there ; and one day, as he was busily 
engaged repairing the fence between us, I took 
from my Bible a small pocket-pledge of a tasteful 
design — water-lilies, in a Prang chromo of exqui- 
site finish— and went out to try what I could do 
by way of inducing him to stop drinking. This 


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was before the Temperance Rooms were opened, 
before I had gained the experience in the work 
which made me establish as a rule that I would 
never ask a man personally to sign a temperance 
pledge. 

After some preliminary talk about the weather, 
the fence, and the orchard, I said : 

“ Mr. Fraley, I am sorry to see you so often un- 
der the influence of drink.” 

He looked up quickly, flushing red, and then 
bent over the board he was nailing. I went 
on : 

“ I wish you would stop drinking — I do really. 
I wish you would sign this little pledge.” 

He looked up good-humoredly, and pushing 
back his hat to the very crown of his head, re- 
vealing a large, noble forehead, and fixing his in- 
telligent eyes earnestly on mine, he said : 

“ Mrs. H , I make you a solemn promise — ” 

and he paused, watching my face intently, while I 
thought with joy, “ It ’s coming, the promise I 
want; he’s going to do it.” Then, still regarding 
me with a half-serious expression, he abruptly con- 
tinued : “ I promise you that I will never — sign a 
temperance pledge.” 

I thought first I could not have heard him 
aright ; but I soon knew, as I recognized the look 
of keen enjoyment at my surprise and perplexity 
expressed in every lineament of his countenance, 
just what he meant. It was intended both as a 
challenge and a rebuff. For a moment I stood 
with averted face ; but, remembering all I had felt 


Our Pledge Roll. 75 

in his case, and how I had prayed for him, I looked 
up at last and replied with confidence : 

“ Yes, you will sign the pledge, Mr. Fraley.” 

“ I will ? How do you know ? ” 

“ Because I am praying for you.” 

He made no reply ; but, shooting a quick, keen, 
scrutinizing glance into my eyes, which I quietly 
met, he turned and went to his work with a man- 
ner which was intended to cut off further talk. 

I stood a moment ; was not quite ready to give up 
this effort, for somehow I felt that a soul was at 
stake. At last I handed the pledge-card over the 
fence, and said : 

“ Mr. Fraley, I would like to give you this as a 
reminder of this little talk ; and if the time should 
ever come that you conclude to sign it, you will 
have it handy, you know.” 

He stopped work, took the card, and, putting it 
in his note-book, simply said, “ Thank you,” and 
stooped again over the board he was marking, 
while I turned and entered the house. 

The summer passed with no tokens of change in 
Fraley. Occasionally I would meet him, and al- 
ways received a cordial return for my greeting ; 
would invite him to the temperance meetings, and 
occasionally would see him amid the crowd back 
by the door of the hall. 

October came. I had been unusually busy with 
work that took me out of the rooms for an hour 
or two at a time, and one day, in looking over the 
pledge roll, I was — shall I say surprised ? to find 
Henry Fraley’s name on the page. I was sur- 


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prised. Although I had been looking for and ex. 
pecting this very thing, yet when it came I could 
hardly believe the evidence before me. I went 
into the little back parlor and closet of prayer, and 
thanked God, and asked him to especially bless 
that young man. 

A day or two after he came into the rooms. I 
arose to meet him, and informed him, as I took his 
hand, that I had found his name, and wanted to 
congratulate him on the fact that it was on my 
pledge roll. After a moment he replied : 

“ I once made you a solemn promise, Mrs. 
H . Do you remember ? ” 

“I do.” 

“ I kept it pretty well.” 

“ Yes, long enough.” 

“ Well, now I want to make you another. I’m 
going to stick by that pledge there, come what 
will.” 

“ I believe you are honest in this intention,” 
I said ; “ but have you thought what it will cost 
you to do this?” 

“ I think so.” 

“ Do you know it will be no easy work to keep 
that pledge?” 

“ Oh ! I don’t know as to that. Of course 
a fellow will want a drink sometimes; but as 
for keeping that promise I’ve made there, why, 
I have set out to do it, and there’ll be no 
trouble.” 

“That day when you took this pledge, did you 
take the last part of it also ? ” 


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He took up the roll and read the pledge over; 
then, with a serio-comic smile, said : 

“ Which ? The ‘ Lord help me ’ part ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Not specially that I know of. But I suppose 
the Lord helps everybody.” 

“ But for the especial work of your reformation 
from strong drink you will need especial help. 
You remember I told you I was praying for you ? ” 

“ I remember.” 

“ I shall pray for you with new interest and 
meaning from this time. Before I prayed that 
you might be led to the pledge ; now I shall pray 
that you may be led to Christ.” 

“Well, Mrs. H , you’ve taken a job on your 

hands, sure enough,” he replied, almost derisively ; 
then added more seriously : “ I can’t say but your 
first prayer has been answered, for when I pro- 
mised you never to sign the temperance pledge I 
meant it ; and may be if you hadn’t prayed I never 
should have taken that back and made this other 
promise. And I honestly hope your last prayer 
may be answered, if any good will come of it ; but 
I tell you I doubt it exceedingly ; it ’ll be breath 
thrown away.” 

“ Well,” I replied, “the Lord bless you! And, 
whatever else you may forget of this talk, don’t 
forget that without the ‘ Lord’s help ’ you cannot 
reform. You may possibly stop drinking — that 
will be good — but it is not all you need to do ; it 
is not the best you can do. You are doing well 
to stop drinking ; but while you are doing well, 


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why not do the very best you can for yourself, 
and stop sinning? ” 

“ Oh ! yes,” he exclaimed recklessly ; “ stop liv- 
ing and done with it. I think I’ll try my hand 
at stopping the drink first, and see about other 
sins afterward.” 

“ All right ! do the best you can, and I shall be 
satisfied, and so will God,” I answered. 

“ Have to be ! ” he retorted sententiously. 

“But be sure it is the very best you can do ; 
don’t stop short of that. And remember you can 
count on me for a friend to the utmost of my 
ability.” 

“ Thank you.” 

“ And now for a promise that always goes with 
this pledge. When you want a drink will you 
come to me ? ” 

“What’s that for?” 

“ Because when you have to have a drink I’d 
rather give it to you myself.” 

“ Y-e-e-s? Leave a fellow about as dry as it 
found him, eh ? ” 

“ Come and sec.” 

“ All right ! I suppose I may as well go the 
whole figure while I’m about it. Anything more 
now ? ” 

“ Yes ; this little vest-pocket copy of the Psalms 
— carry it with you and read it.” 

“ Thank you. But, Mrs. H , I know it by 

heart now. Why, I could repeat Scripture until 
the cows come home — by the hour ; have done 
it for the drinks on a wager lots of times.” 


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“ In saloons ? ” I asked in surprise. 

“ Yes, certainly.” 

“ Why, Henry Fraley-! ” 

“ Well, why not? Lots of worse things are said 
in saloons. I generally gave them the best I had ; 
and what’s better than the Bible?” 

This was said with a tone and manner that hurt 
me, and after a moment I replied : “ Well, that is 
between you and God ; he can take care of his 
own word. But I will write the pledge in this 
book and witness it, and you write your name 
here and carry it with you.” 

“ Certainly, if you wish it.” 

“I do ; and if any one asks you to take a drink 
just show them this.” 

“ All right. You put a fellow in close quarters, 
don’t you ? ” 

“ We want it to be just as hard as possible to 
fail.” 

“That’s all right; well, now I guess I’m fixed 
up so I shall stand sure, and I’ll go to work.” 

“ Nothing is sure without God.” 

“Oh! no. Well, good-day. I’ll report pro- 
gress.” 

So he went out to try’ his strength against that 
of a life-long habit. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


EW men have started into this 
work of breaking up an evil ha- 
bit with more confidence than 
did Henry Fraley; few have 
started in with more “ odds ” 
against them, none with a more 
determined purpose ; and to few 
have come sharper conflicts or 
more uncertain weather. 

He had drunk nearly all his 
life, or since a boy ; had mingled with the fre- 
quenters of saloons and cigar-stores almost exclu- 
sively ; was noted for his scepticism ; was a scoffer 
at religion, and many were the stories told of his 
daring profanity ; and now he was evidently mak- 
ing the very first effort of his life to “ be better," 
to break away somewhat from a career of reckless- 
ness, and sin, and dissipation, and had hardly the 
slightest idea yet of what this new departure sig- 
nified to him. 

I was impressed from the first with a certain 
“ something ” in this man which gave me confi- 
dence now in the integrity of his purpose and in 
his honor as a man when the whiskey was out of 
him ; and I had not the slightest effort to believe 
in him so far as he professed. And, anyhow, it 

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81 


was my business to take him where I found him, 
and by God’s help try to save him ; and to this I 
addressed myself with earnest heart and purpose. 

He came often into the rooms ; came to the Gos- 
pel meetings, and I tried to persuade him to join 
the Reform Club just organized ; but this he per- 
sistently refused to do, urging as a reason that 
he should wait and see how he got along with just 
the pledge before he assumed any further obliga- 
tions. 

Prophets of evil were plenty in his case ; very 
few, in fact, having much confidence even in his 
effort. 

The suspicion was even expressed that he was a 
spy in the rooms, employed by the saloon men, 
with whom it was affirmed he was on good terms, 
and that his associates were still principally among 
drinking men. 

To the spy matter I replied that, even if he were, 
that was all right as far as we were concerned ; 
we would like to issue a daily bulletin of our say- 
ings and doings in the rooms, if we could afford 
it, so the more he or any other did of publishing 
us the better ; but I maintained my faith in his 
honor. 

One day the report came to me that he had been 
drinking. 

“ If he has,” said I to my informant, “ I shall 
request that it be left him to tell me so before I 
listen. I will not hear reports against my ‘ boys.’ ” 

This was an invariable rule, based upon the sup- 
position that these men were in earnest in the work 


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they had undertaken, and thus above suspicion of 
duplicity ; and if one fell, there was some reason 
for it outside of his own will. 

Mr. Fraley came into the rooms soon after this 
rumor was brought to me, and at the first glance 
I knew the truth of his fall ; but, beyond a keen 
glance to satisfy myself, I manifested nothing 
unusual. I said, “Good-morning, Henry!” as 
cheerfully as ever, and then waited for him to 
speak ; but after staying a few moments he start- 
ed out, when I said, detaining him : 

“• Come in this afternoon ; I want to see you. 
Will you?” 

“ I don’t know as I can,” he replied hesitatingly. 

“Well, if you can; I want to see you very 
much.” 

He looked at me a moment with sorrow, shame, 
and entreaty in his expression, and replied : 

“ Well, I will if I can." 

I had resort to prayer for him as soon as he 
had gone. I pleaded for his soul, and asked for 
wisdom that I might know just what to do for 
him now in his extremity. 

Along in the afternoon he came in, looking like 
a man going to execution. 

I arose to meet him again, shook hands with 
him, and led him into the little prayer-room. We 
had no sooner entered and closed the door than 
he said : 

“ I’ve been worsted, Mrs. H , that’s a fact. 

I wouldn’t ha’ believed it possible, but it’s true.” 

“Yes, I saw it when you came in this morning; 


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but I am glad you didn’t run away from us, and I 
am so glad you came back this afternoon. It ’s no- 
thing to surprise me very much under the circum- 
stances; and now let us talk it over. But, remem- 
ber, in the first place, I do not consider your 
pledge broken. It is a life obligation — just as bind- 
ing now as at first ; it is like a mark that )~ou are 
trying to measure up to. You have failed once ; 
tell me how it all happened.” 

And he did tell me with the frankness and 
candor of a child ; and when he had finished I 
realized more . than ever how much he, and all 
men trying to reform, needed God. He was 
himself astonished at the intensity of his thirst 
for strong drink and at his own weakness. This 
had been revealed to him as his whole system 
began to cry out after the usual supply and to 
rebel against the principle of abstinence. This 
appetite was, in him, a natural inheritance, and 
was aroused by the odor of liquors so as to 
be almost uncontrollable. And temptation came 
to him in a manner altogether unlooked for. He 
had been called to assist in the care of a dying 
man ; had watched alone with him one night. 
According to the physician’s order, he gave him 
wine at regular intervals, and when he went out 
to his lunch at night he found a bottle of wine 
among the refreshments on the table. Weary 
and alone, his thirst already excited by the wine 
in the sick-room, he yielded to the temptation, 
drank the wine in the bottle, and, with blood and 
brain on fire, as soon as released from his post of 


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duty, led by the demon now fully aroused, he 
hastened to satisfy his craving for strong drink. 
As he came to realize what he had done he had 
a hard struggle to stop, but this he determined 
to do at once. But he had failed when he sup- 
posed success was assured ; this he fully realized, 
and was ashamed, distressed, almost hopeless, 
but full of “ clear grit .” 

“ I will conquer this,” he exclaimed, walking 
the floor as he talked. “ I will conquer. I will 
not be beaten by this thing. If I have fallen I 
will up and at it again.” 

“ That’s all right as far as it goes, Henry,” I 
said ; “ but I must hold you to the truth that 
in and of yourself you are not sufficient for these 
things. The weight to be lifted is too great for 
the power you apply. You need more power; 
must have it. Over here in the Gospel of the 
Son of God is the great motor ; there is power 
enough for you. You must gear on to God with 
belts of faith and bands of prayer, as I said in 
the Gospel meeting, or you will fail to lift this 
hulk of a wasted life out of the channel of your 
new and better endeavor, and it will stand as an 
obstruction in the way of your progress to the 
real, solid, sober manhood you are seeking.” 

“ But I can’t be a Christian,” he said impatient- 
ly ; “ the whole thing is absurd to me. The doc- 
trine of the atonement is offensive. I can never 
be saved by the ‘ blood of Christ.’ ” 

“You are to be ‘ saved by his life l but you 
must be reconciled by his blood. Perhaps you 


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must first be reconciled to his blood, his death.” 
And I turned the leaves of my Bible over to the 
fifth chapter of Romans, and read Paul’s state- 
ment of the plan of salvation, and expounded it 
the best I could to suit his case. 

He listened as I read and talked, sitting beside 
me at the table with every appearance of respect 
and the deepest interest, and seemed humbled 
and softened by the consciousness of his own 
weakness as illustrated by his fall and as taught 
by the Word, which was evidently being im- 
pressed upon his heart by the Spirit. 

He renewed his pledge ; but when I said, 
“ Now, Henry, I have prayed for you many 
times ; I want to pray with you here before you 
go,” he hastily refused to allow it, and, abruptly 
leaving the room, started out again to walk the 
demon-haunted way he had chosen in his search 
for a better life. 

How many times Henry Fraley fell from so- 
briety during that first year he can tell you, but 
I cannot. 

The struggle was a terrible one. Temperance 
people lost what faith they had, and some of 
them became disgusted, and he was in the deep- 
est trouble. 

One day in the latter part of the winter he 
came to the rooms, the very image of despair. 
It was a time when a great many men were out 
of employment and congregated in the rooms ; 
and that morning a large number were in, both 
reading-room and parlor being occupied, and 


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he could find no opportunity of speaking to me. 
He walked back and forth uneasily, I observing 
him as I sat at the table writing, knowing pretty 
well something of the cause of his unrest. At 
last he took an old envelope from his breast- 
pocket, and, tearing off a scrap about an inch 
square, wrote on it, and passed it along by the 
hands of those who sat near to me. I took it 
and read : “ Romans vii. 24.” I laid down my 
pen, opened my Bible, and read : “ O wretched 
man that I am ! who shall deliver me from the 
body of this death ? ” 

I looked up ; he was standing in the room 
with his hands in his pockets, his hat drawn 
down over his forehead, in an attitude peculiar 
to him when troubled ; and his eyes were fixed 
upon my face, as if to read the answer to his 
despairing question. 

As I think this over I know I must have 
smiled as I looked up, in spite of my deep sym- 
pathy with his distress, for I was so glad of the 
answer to that question that was all ready for me 
to give him. I think I was never so glad -because 
of the completeness of the Gospel as I was at 
that moment — glad that I had not to stop and 
work out the solution of this problem ; that we 
were not referred to science or to philosophy, 
but that it was there upon record, ready to meet 
just such an emergency as this. I turned over 
the scrap of paper, and wrote on the other side : 
“Romans vii. 25; 1 Cor. xv. 57: ‘I thank God 
through Jesus Christ our Lord ’ ; ‘ Thanks be to 


Our Pledge Roll. 87 

God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord 
Jesus Christ.’ ” 

This was passed to him through many hands. 
He read the figures, and, taking up a Bible which 
was in an empty chair near by, took a seat by the 
window ; with his face turned from the company 
in the room, and with his hat drawn down over 
his eyes, he proceeded to find and read the pas- 
sages given. 1 watched him with keen interest 
and constant prayer, for I felt it was a critical 
time for him in his work of personal reform. 

He sat silent for some time, and almost motion- 
less, bending over the open book, turning from 
Romans to Corinthians and back again. At 
length he closed the book, put the scrap of paper 
containing the references in his note-book, arose, 
and, without lifting his eyes to the occupants of 
the room, passed out. 

I knew a terrible conflict was going on in his 
heart, and kept praying for his deliverance. 

A day or two after he came in again, at noon, 
when he knew he would find the rooms compara- 
tively quiet. I was alone. He seated himself at 
the long table, and, taking up a Bible, said as he 
began turning the leaves : 

“ Now, Mrs. H , just what does this mean : 

‘ Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory 
through our Lord Jesus Christ ’ ? How can God, 
how does he, give us the victory — me, for instance ? 
I thought we had it to get pretty much ourselves 
— with his help, of course ; but this giving the victo- 
ry I don’t understand. And,” he continued after 


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a moment as I sat silent, “ I presume I can guess 
pretty much what you will say. I know the 
church phrases ; I know the Scripture that 
hitches on to this ; but now if this means anything 
for me — something practical you know, just for 
me — well, I guess 1 ’m ready.” 

Any Christian man or woman reading these 
pages, who has ever thus been brought face to 
face with the extreme need of a human soul, will 
realize somewhat of the earnestness with which 
for a moment my whole heart was lifted to the 
great Source of wisdom, seeking just the answer 
for this man — just the illustration that should 
bring the truth out into the light, so that he 
might see, and understand, and be saved by it. 

At last I said : 

“ Are you able to win it yourself, Henry — the 
victory in this hard fight of yours ? ” 

“No. I am weak,” he replied with a gesture 
of disgust. 

“ Then how are you to get it ? ” 

“ Oh ! I don’t know, unless God does give it ; 
that’s just what I want to know.” 

“You want victory? ” 

“ Want it? God knows I do; must have it.” | 

“ Well,” I said, after studying a moment, still 
seeking the reply, “ I think it is just this way: 
You remember how it was in the days of the 
great Rebellion. The need was a great one ; it 
was ours as much as yours ; mine as much as my 
husband’s. It was our war; but if it had been left 
for us women, with our little children in our arms. 


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to have gone down there and met those armies on 
the field of battle, we must have surrendered or 
been conquered, for we were not sufficient for 
the terrible ordeal of camp, and march, and battle. 
The government knew we couldn’t do it, so the 
help, in this hour of peril, was laid upon those 
who were able. You men, the ‘ Boys in Blue,’ 
went down there and met the enemy of the 
Union ; fought the battles, endured camp and 
march for us and the Union , not for yourselves ; 
and you won the victory, and came back and 
brought it to us — -gave it to us. It was ours as 
much as though we had fought in person, as 
though we had left arms and legs, ay, and poured 
out our own blood to gain it. And it was for the 
South as much as the North — it was for the Union , 
and meant peace, and prosperity, and liberty to 
the whole country, if they would but accept it on 
the easy terms of loyalty to government and 
obedience to law. 

“Just so in this case of yours to-day. Our 
Father in heaven, watching over our interests, 
saw that we were in danger from a great enemy 
that had massed his forces against us. Fie knew 
we could never overcome him ourselves ; we 
weren’t strong enough. The need was great — just 
like your need now — so he 1 laid help upon One 
mighty to save,’ and when the time for action 
came, when the ‘ battle was set,’ the Captain of 
our salvation went down, clothed with all the 
power of the everlasting kingdom, and met the 
allied forces of evil — the world , the flesh , and the 


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devil — and in one decisive battle overcame them, 
broke their dominion over us, and * ascended on 
high, leading captivity captive/ ‘ giving gifts to 
men ’ ; and he comes to you to-day, Henry, with 
this gift of victory. The question is simply, Will 
you have it? 

“ If, like the factious South, you still nurse the 
spirit of rebellion, if the blood which was the price 
of your victory still is an ‘offence ’ to you, all the 
benefits that should accrue to you are of no avail, 
just because you do not consent to be reconciled. 
What do you say, Henry ? ” 

He sat for a long time, saying nothing. At last 
he replied in a low tone : 

“ I see it in a new light, Mrs. H ; but it is a 

great question. I cannot answer it at once.” 

“ May I pray with you, Henry ? ” I asked after 
some moments of silence. 

“ I wish you would,” he replied, and, rising at 
once, knelt while I took his case to God in prayer 
out of a heart almost too full for utterance. 

The history of the conversations and anxieties 
of those days would fill a volume. For days and 
weeks this boy was scarcely out of my mind, and 
continual prayer was offered for him. 

One Sunday afternoon, not long after the con- 
versation narrated above, after the Gospel meet- 
ing at the rooms, when I started for home 
Henry walked along with me, and, as we came to 
my gate, asked if he might go in a moment. 

“ Certainly,” I replied, and he went in with me. 
He did not notice my offer of a chair, but taking 


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9 * 


out the little vest-pocket copy of the Psalms in 
which I had written the pledge for him, and 
playing with the leaves in a preoccupied way, he 
said : 

“ Mrs. H , you have had faith in my ef- 

forts ? ” 

“ Yes, indeed,’’ I replied. 

“You have believed I meant business?” 

“ I have, Henry.” 

“ Yes, you have ; but I wonder you haven’t got 
discouraged and given me up, just as everybody 
else has.” 

“ You know, Henry, I never give up a man.” 

“ I know you don’t, and God bless you for it ! 
If you had ever shown by look or act that you 
had lost faith in me I don’t know where I should 
be to-day ; one thing is certain— I should not have 
been here on the errand that brings me to-day. 
I told you once that I should not take any * Gos- 
pel ’ in my temperance, but the time has come 
to take that back, as I have some other sayings. 
The time has come that I need a little of the tinc- 
ture of Gospel in my temperance to keep it with- 
‘al. And last night I tell you I had a pretty sober 
dish of conversation with myself in my room ; and 
I wrote on the page opposite the old pledge in 
this book another, which I wish to sign here in 
your presence, and wish you to witness.” 

He handed me the book, and I read a pledge 
which was a confession of his weakness and need, 
and of his firm conviction that only the salvation 
of God could help him, and closed with a prayer 


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for help, pardon, and salvation. He stood watch- 
ing me intently, with a strained look that was 
painful to see, as I looked up after reading this 
new pledge, while my own heart was full. I felt 
that in this little article of confession a great ad- 
mission had been made by this man — a long step 
taken toward true repentance ; yet I thought I 
could see still in him a desire to evade the point 
of absolute surrender to Christ. Yet I believed 
in his sincerity, and could but pity the condition 
in which even this effort must leave him, if it was 
simply a new promise, more solemn, perhaps, and 
based upon a new sense of need ; but did it mean 
Christ, and Christ only? After a moment I 
asked : 

“Just what does this mean to you, Henry?” 

“ It means a great deal,” he replied. “ The 
keeping of that pledge means sobriety, manhood 
— all that I am struggling after.” 

“ Does it mean Christ and his life in you ? ” 

He stood a moment, while his brows contracted 
with perplexed thought, and then, with a half-sigh, 
reaching out and taking the book from my hand, 
he said : 

“ Oh ! I don’t know, Mrs. H ; that is a hard 

question. But, I tell you, this is a good deal of a 
change for me, and no knowing what it may be 
the beginning of.” 

He stepped up to the secretary and wrote his 
name to the pledge; then handed it to me, and I 
wrote mine as witness. 

“ Now,” he said, “if it is not too much trouble 


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— too much to ask of you under the circum- 
stances — will you pray for me once more?” 

So we knelt, and I prayed ; and he left with a 
look of comfort that it did me good to see. 

Matters went on for some time very fair- 
ly. Mr. Fraley passed over two or three times 
when temptation came pretty close home, and 
was getting to himself a goodly degree of confi- 
dence and courage. 

We often talked in those days of the matter • 
of salvation through Christ. He was always 
ready to listen ; often propounded questions lead- 
ing out into the deep things of God ; but he was 
not yet ready to “ take the name of Jesus” and 
be known by it. He had entirely thrown away 
his old manner of talking of sacred things. His 
advent into the midst of a company was no 
longer the signal for laughter at all holy things, 
and scoffing and jesting at the expense of the 
faith of Christendom ; still, he would say : “ I 

cannot receive the Gospel just as you want me 
to yet ; but I am coming along, I think, and the 
time may come. I see many things that once 
were hidden from me.” 

So I prayed, and waited, and trusted ; and 
right in the midst of confidence and hope there 
came again the terrible blow of his fall. He was 
ashamed, discouraged; I was grieved and felt 
helpless, and everybody besides was disgusted. I 
could not control or silence the murmurs and 
expressions of contempt for “ such duplicity,” as 
some were pleased to call it. It was a dark and 


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stormy time, and my only refuge was the closet 
of prayer, where 1 spent much time in urging my 
suit before God. 

It had come to be that I could talk with no one 
about my work for these men without meeting 
some barbed arrow that had power to wound. 

“Do you still believe in Fraley and his profes- 
sions?” was asked one day by a leading Christian 
man. 

“ Believe in his professions ? ” I replied. “ I 
should not think it very hard for any one to do 
that. What does he profess ? What is there 
to doubt ? He professes only to be a lost man 
struggling for life ; it does not take much stretch- 
ing of faith to believe this of him.” 

Yet he was treated by many as though he was 
professing all purity and godliness, and living 
the life of a debauchee without shame. 

One day about this time a man came into the 
rooms with a roll of paper in his hand, and said 
to me : 

“ We have been circulating a petition to the 
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, praying 
that Henry Fraley be excluded from the Tempe- 
rance Rooms. He is not true ; he keeps drinking 
right along, and will come and confess to you, 
and re-sign the pledge, and go right out and 
tell everything that is done here.” 

“ Why should he not ? ” I interrupted. 

“ Well,” he replied hotly, “ we’ve just made up 
our minds he isn’t fit to have about, and are not 
going to tolerate him any longer. We’ve got 


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good names on our paper.” And he mentioned 
some that made my heart burn with shame for 
the church which bore the name of Him who 
came to seek after and to save that which is 
lost. The messenger of these petitions handed 
out the roll toward me, saying : 

“ We wish you to present this to the ladies at 
your next meeting.” 

“ Me !” I exclaimed, recoiling from the paper 
he was putting into my hand. 

“ Why, y-e-s,” he began to reply, evidently 
surprised. “ Why, we thought — as — that — ah — ” 

“ No, sir,” I continued. “ You may do it, if you 
wish, or your people may appoint some one to 
do it, and find out what the Woman’s Christian 
Temperance Union is made of. It may do you 
good. We meet Thursday at 3 P.M.” 

That petition was never presented. I wonder- 
ed what had become of it, and if Fraley ever 
heard of it, and watched him closely, and made 
every possible effort to make him feel that, as a 
representative of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus 
Christ to him, I sympathized with his every ef- 
fort, and was ready to stand by him to the end 
in his life struggle. 

But those were dark and sorrowful days; and 
some who read this chronicle will recall much 
of the unwritten history of this period of our 
work, and will, in the light of to-day, understand 
why they had occasion so often to ask : 

‘‘Why are you so sad, Mrs. H ? What 

makes you look so tired all the time ? ” 


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The burdens were very heavy to bear, and 
must have crushed any heart unsupported by di- 
vine strength. In those days I learned to under- 
stand some things in the life of Jesus and the ex- 
periences of Moses and of Paul that had before 
been almost without meaning to me. I knew 
how Moses’ heart burned within him when he 
said : “ Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin — 

and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy 
book wh # ich thou hast written.” I learned how 
Paul’s soul was grieved when he wrote: “ I have 
great heaviness and continual sorrow in my 
heart; for I could wish that myself were accursed 
from Christ for my brethren.” And something 
of the bitterness of the cup of Gethsemane 
touched my lips as I still repeated over and 
over the promise which had been the founda- 
tion of my faith and the inspiration of my pray- 
ers for this man, and those who, like him, were 
struggling with the demon of drink. 

One day during this time, about the time of the 
bringing in of the petition referred to, Henry 
came into the rooms again and asked me to pray 
for him, saying : 

“ I am so weak I must have help. I don’t 
know but you will be tired of all this, but I must 
come to you.” 

I replied : “ I am glad you come to me ; but the 
time is coming when you must learn to pray for 
yourself.” 

“ I do pray, Mrs. H , and have every day 

since I signed that new pledge.” 


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We knelt together again in prayer, and after I 
had prayed he began, and with simple fervence 
littered his request to God ; and as he arose and 
passed out of the room I knew he had really 
taken a step in the advance in his new life. 

The next day he came in and stood beside the 
reading-table a few moments, and then, without 
saying anything, went out. I was very busy 
and did not think much about it, until, a little 
while after, I discovered lying amon^ the papers 
on the table the roll of the petition and its signa- 
tures. My first impulse was to put it in the 
stove, but then I thought I would not touch it 
so rrfuch as with a finger. I said: “I will leave 
that thing with those who have handled it, but I 
really hope Henry did not see it this morning ” ; 
yet I feared he had. It soon disappeared, but I 
could not fail to see tokens of its influence upon 
its victim, and sometimes I almost feared that 
utter disaster would be the result. The darkness 
seemed to thicken all about his soul ; suspicion 
dogged his every step ; and looking back to-day,. 
I wonder that he ever made another effort. 

1 urged a personal acceptance of Christ upon 
him in our talks those days ; a complete surren- 
der of himself to the Holy Spirit. He would lis- 
ten ; he even began regularly to attend church ; 
and as special meetings were being held in one 
of the churches, Bible readings in the morning 
with other services afternoon and evening, under 
the direction of an evangelist, he was in constant 
attendance. And at length one evening, with a 


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spirit well-nigh broken and indeed contrite, and a 
mind filled with earnest enquiry, he went down 
into the enquiry- meeting after the regular service. 
As he sat there he was approached by a worker 
in those meetings, a man who had always known 
him, who came and abruptly said : 

“ Fraley, we want no one in these meetings 
who does not come with a sincere motive.” 

Henry had become pretty well accustomed to 
being treated with suspicion before, but this as- 
tonished him for a moment, and completely ban- 
ished every desire for Christian counsel, for the 
time at least, and he arose and left the church. 

This event was almost a death-blow to Fraley’s 
reformation and the hope of his salvation. 

“ They never forget a fellow’s past life,” he said 
the next day as he was talking it over with me. 
“ No matter how sincere I may be, nobody be- 
lieves it, because I used to be a scoffer.” 

“ Don’t say ‘ nobody l ” I replied. 

“ Well, not always, that is true. Some of the 
ladies of the Union believe in us ; we know you 

always do, Mrs. H . It keeps many a boy to 

the purpose to be true who would otherwise lose 
all courage and go to ruin.” 

“ But, Henry, this is a matter for yourself,” I 
said ; “ it is for yourself and not another. Sup- 
pose all the world lose confidence in you, if you 
know between your own soul and God that you 
are sincere, you need not, should not go to 
ruin, as you say. If you drink it’s your own 
money that is wasted, your own strength that is 


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dissipated, your own brain that is cooked and 
clogged, your own nerves that are burned up, 
your own blood that is poisoned, your own home 
that is made wretched, your own future that is 
blighted, and your own soul that is lost at last.” 

“ Yes, that’s all so, of course,” he replied ; “ but 
a fellow gets so he don’t care for himself, and 
needs some incentive outside of any personal con- 
siderations to make him care whether he goes to 
ruin or not. And the fact that somebody does 
care who has no real need to care — somebody 
whose bread and butter is in no way concerned — 
cares just for the sake of his manhood, because 
there is something worth saving, will inspire him 
with ambition in spite of himself.” 

“ Yes, I understand that, and that is just what 
we women of the Union have been trying to do : 
to furnish the confidence that should made a good 
starting point for you boys in the better life ; but 
you know the utmost of our efforts can never be 
more than a beginning of the real work, and that 
is why I say so often that you must go on to God 
and get hold of his strength, because all else will 
fail you. You must have something to depend 
upon outside of yourself, we know that ; but that 
something is not the confidence of men and 
women, the sympathy of world, or church, or 
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, or any in- 
dividual ; it must be God and his Spirit.” 

“ Well, I am trusting in God ; I am going to ; 
but I can’t be a Christian, at least not in the 
church. I find that it is vain to put trust even in 


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church members ; they won’t have anything to do 
with us fellows.” 

“ Why, Mr. Fraley,” I said, “ don’t you know 
that the very people who are doing all this work 
for you fellows are church people ? The ladies of 
the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and 
all these men nearly who stand so nobly by us 
and by you boys — who pay the expenses of these 
rooms and of the public meetings, and all the 
countless things that have to be looked after — are 
church people, almost without exception. But 
for the church, and the Spirit that is its life, there 
would be no Woman’s Christian Temperance 
Union to-day ; nor would there be a Reform 
Club, and I doubt if there would be a reformed 
man. Every man who has signed the pledge in 
these days has done it because somebody who is in 
the church has prayed for him ; and every man who 
has kept it, and is sober to-day, even if he does 
not pray himself, is sober because he is prayed for.” 

"Well, I guess that is so,” he answered 
thoughtfully. 

" Yes, indeed; and you have more true friends 
in the church than out of it.” 

"Yes; but it was mighty hard to be met that 
way the first time I ever went into an enquiry- 
meeting. And God knows I was honest. You 
have asked me so many times to become a Chris- 
tian, and told me it is the sure way ; and I fully 
made up my mind to go into that meeting and do 
all I could to find the way to be saved, but it is 
of no use for me to try.” 


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“ That depends upon what you try for, and 
whether you do it in God’s sight or in the sight 
of men — whether you really and truly seek God 
or self. But this is a matter that must always be 
between you and God only. You know if you 
are sincere, and that is sufficient.” 

“ It ought to be,” he replied soberly. “ But,” 
he continued, “ I tell you it is pretty hard. Yet 
I don’t wonder, that I know of, that people lose 
confidence in me. I do in myself. I have failed 
so many times, and I tell you I came pretty near 
giving up altogether the day I saw that petition 
on the table.” 

“ You saw it, then ? ” 

“ Yes. I knew something of the kind was 
afoot before that, and I felt as though the world 
was coming to an end. I knew I had no hold on 
anybody’s confidence but yours, and I used to 
watch you when you came into the rooms, or if 
I met you anywhere, to see if you gave me up. 
But I could see in your eyes that you still be- 
lieved in me, and I said I would hold on and fight 
it out, if it took a life time. 

“ Well, that day I came in, and that paper was 
lying there. I could not help seeing just what it 
was, and some of the names on it did just hurt 
me — men who have said they prayed for me, and 
all that. I tell you I came near giving up. I 
did give up for a little while. I went right out 
of here perfectly reckless, and went down into a 
saloon and called for four fingers of brandy. I 
thought I would drink hard and fast, and end it 


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all. Just as I was about to drink it I remember- 
ed how, the day before, I had come in and asked 
you to pray for me, and how we went in there, 
and you prayed that in the time of temptation I 
might be protected and led into the open door 
of escape, and then how I prayed ; and I thought, 
‘ Now is the time, Lord,’ and I put that glass down 
and walked out, and I have really felt stronger 
since. And I made up my mind I would not let 
anything anybody could say or do drive me off 
like that again.” 

“ And still you let a very little thing keep you 
from coming to Christ.” 

He made no reply, and soon, with a quiet, 
thoughtful manner, arose and left the rooms. 

Time passed on with little change in this 
young man, except that he gained in confidence 
and grew in favor with the frequenters of the 
rooms, and gathered friends from among those 
who were looking on. The fixed purpose in his 
heart to become a sober man began to give a cer- 
tain tone to all his life, and he began to be recog- 
nized by those who saw him often as a man of 
“ clear grit ,” and it began to be expected that if 
he “fell ” he would “ up and at it again.” 

After a time he joined the Reform Club, and 
really began to take hold of the work. 

Contributions from his ready and forceful pen 
found their way here and there through the tem- 
perance press, and occasionally his voice was 
heard from the platform in a few strong but 
modestly-uttered words; and if he saw signs of 


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weakness in a man who was trying- to reform, he 
would be on the alert with a peculiar sympathy 
expressed in his whole manner, watching for an 
opportunity to be of service to him, ready to do 
anything, even to shutting himself in with him 
and caring for him night and day. 

I watched the developments of this case with 
peculiar interest and constant anxiety ; praying 
that Henry might be led to see his privilege in 
Christ and become settled in a Christian life. 

Very often the story would, be afloat that 
“ Fraley is drinking again ” ; but it happened that 
each time there was sufficient proof to the con- 
trary to satisfy all interested parties, and the tide 
of sympathy and trust turned its full current in 
his favor ; and his life was going on in quite an 
even course, and I began to feel a good degree 
of relief from the long strain of solicitude in his 
behalf, when one day I met him on the street, 
several days having passed without his coming 
to the rooms, and I knew by his appearance 
that there was trouble. I went up to the rooms 
sick at heart. The thought that he had been 
drinking, which would come, brought such a 
sense of weariness and utter helplessness as I had 
hardly ever known ; and I felt as never before 
that Cod only can deliver from this bondage. I 
thought : “ Can I go on with this work in the face 
of such an overwhelming force of the enemy 
against us? The appetite for rum, stronger than 
a demon ; the open doors of temptation on every 
hand ; and the weak, withered wills of drink- 


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cursed men — all against the hope of success.” 
As I sat, listless and nerveless, pondering this mat- 
ter, Fraley came in. 

I greeted him as usual, and yet not. My heart 
was too heavy for bright looks or easy words. I 
thought, “He must not see my thought in my 
face ” ; but disguise was useless. He gave me a 
quick, keen glance, turned and walked to the 
window, then back and forth in the room, without 
a word. I began preparation for going home. 
Seeing this, he stepped toward the prayer-room 
and said : 

“ I must see you, Mrs. H , before you go.” 

I turned slowly, he thought reluctantly, into the 
little room that had become the chapel, and sat 
down, while he stood before me with such distress 
upon his face as it had never worn before. I said 
nothing, waiting for him to begin. After some 
time he said : 

“ I don’t need to tell you ; you know.” 

“You have been drinking again,” I said; and, 
in spite of myself, my despair of ever helping this 
man any more gave a strange sound to my voice. 
He knew its sound, and interpreted it at once, and 
oh ! how I did wish I could have toned my voice 
with a note of cheer, instead of the funeral knell 
which seemed to sound in it. He answered quick- 
ly and bitterly : 

“Yes, I have been drinking, and I have been 
trying for two days to come up and see you and 
face the music, but I couldn’t. I feared how it 
would be ; I should think you would give me up.” 


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105 

This last was spoken with emphasis, and seemed 
almost like an answer to my thoughts. My mind 
went wearily over the hard way of effort — of bro- 
ken pledges, of prayers and tears — which I had 
walked with so many of these my brethren, until 
it had often seemed that I was myself trying hard 
to keep the pledge against great odds ; and for the 
first time in my life I asked : “ Does it pay ? ” I 
looked up at the tall form standing before me, and 
my whole soul replied : “ Ay, it does pay ; God 
help me now ! ” 

And yet, feeling as never before that all this 
work comes to naught that does not end in Christ, 

I said : 

“ Henry, I do not give you up — I never shall; 
but I do feel that up to this moment I have done 
all I can. I cannot save you ; I do not know as I 
can even help you any more ; God must save you. 
Christ only is your refuge, but you will not come 
to him; you come to me instead. You must go 
to him. I cannot bear this terrible load alone ; we 
must get the Lord Jesus to help.” 

“ Why, yes, Mrs. H ,” he replied in a tone 

of astonishment, as if he wondered if I had been 
doing anything else ; “ and that is just what I , 
came up to talk with you about, but you don’t 
seem ready, or something — ” 

I not ready, my faith and courage failing at just 
the very moment when most needed, his faith 
coming to the rescue ! And suddenly we seemed 
to have changed places : the man before me was 
stronger than I ; I was broken and helpless, he 


106 Our Pledge Roll . 

was assured and brave, having taken on power 
from some source mysteriously, suddenly, but ef- 
fectually. He appeared altogether in a new light, 
as after a few moments he said : 

“ Mrs. H , I have not said what I came up 

to say. I do not wonder you feel that you cannot 
help me, yet I shall not give up even if you for- 
sake me ; but you can at least tie this red ribbon 
in my button-hole, can’t you ? ” 

I arose, and, taking the ribbon he handed me, 
and almost feeling that there was no further need, 
tied the knot, while a strong assurance that the 
hard fight was over, and this whole work was now- 
in God’s hands for the finishing touches of his own 
Spirit, brought me peace and comfort. 

I wish to be understood that I had lost none of 
my confidence in this man’s sincerity or God’s 
ability, but had been overtaken by a consciousness 
of my own utter weakness in the struggle for the 
souls of men against this great power of sin, and 
that my effort must fail to do this work, only so 
far as it should be an instrument employed by 
God and moved by his own hand. 

I knew this before, but it is one thing to know 
a truth and another to see and feel it as I did that 
day. 

And it was shown to that man in that hour that 
all human help must fail, and except he take hold 
of God he would have nothing left to depend 
upon. 

This day marked another stage in his journey, 
from which he went forward, still suffering from 


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107 

the strong demands of appetite, but with victory 
always within reach, God’s free gift through faith 
in his Son. 

He had said he would never again go into an 
enquiry-meeting, he would never place himself in 
the way of being again stabbed as he was that one 
evening ; but with the new strength that came to 
him he was rendered superior to this resolution, 
and, like the promise never to sign the pledge, this 
one was broken, and he was often found on his 
knees in the prayer and in the enquiry-meeting; 
and in one of these meetings, a few months after 
the incident last mentioned, he humbly and frank- 
ly acknowledged his great need of Christ, publicly 
renounced his infidelity, and put his case into the 
hands of the sinner’s Friend. 

From this time his course was one of con- 
tinual progress. Fie never again touched the 
tempting glass. In talking about it one day he 
said : 

“ I found, for one thing, that I had to keep out 
of saloons ; it has been months since I have dark- 
ened the door of a drinking-place. If any one has 
any business with me, he can’t have it done in a 
saloon.” 

“ And you are trusting in God to keep you ? ” 

“Yes, Mrs. H ; I found out I had to do 

that ; but if any one had told me what a fight I 
should have to get away from drink, and that I 
could not do it myself, I should have thought he 
did not know anything about it.” 

One thing he said in a prayer-meeting one eve-. 


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ning should be repeated in the ears of all our 
young men : 

“When young men begin to drink a little be- 
cause it looks manly, and begin to talk against the 
Bible, and Christ, and religion, and try to be infi- 
dels, because it is counted a token of brains to do 
this, they don’t know what they are laying up for 
themselves for future use. The time will come 
when they will need the money they are spending 
for drink ; they will need the situations they are 
not qualified to fill because of time spent in the sa- 
loon instead of school ; they will need the nerve 
that has been burned out, the strength of muscle 
and brain that has been dissipated, the purity of 
heart and thought that has been for ever corrupt- 
ed. Yes, and the time will come when they will 
need the faith they are now throwing away, when 
they will need something out of God’s Word to 
give them hope and courage enough to live by, 
and they will wake up to a sense of need that no- 
thing they know about or have access to will sup- 
ply ; will find themselves burdened with doubts 
and with habits of life and thought which will be 
too heavy to be borne. 

“ Many a young man beside myself has sold his 
birthright of faith for less than a mess of pottage, 
and afterward found small place for repentance, 
although he has sought it carefully with tears.” 


CHAPTER IX. 


T was Christmas Eve. About five 
o’clock in the afternoon a large, 
broad-shouldered, good-looking 
Irishman came into the rooms. 
He had a determined, business 
look on his face which at once 
attracted my attention. I bade 
him welcome, and he took a chair 
beside the table and picked up 
an illustrated paper. A few mo- 
ments after, as I glanced up from 
my writing, I saw he was sitting with his eyes 
fixed upon the page, which was upside down, 
while his whole expression betrayed the most 
perfect abstraction ; he was in a brown study, 
and utterly oblivious to all his surroundings. I 
watched him. His face bore the traces of drink, 
and yet was stamped with so much that was 
manly and honest that it was a pleasure to look 
at it. 

“ A candidate for the pledge,” I thought, and 
went on with my work. 

Considerable time elapsed. He said not a word ; 
scarcely changed his position or looked up, al- 
though people were coming and going almost 



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constantly, until a man came in and asked for the 
pledge. 

Then my Irishman dropped his paper, turned 
quickly in his chair and sat bolt upright, and 
looked and listened with every faculty on the 
alert. 

The new candidate was in a hurry, and, having 
signed the roll and the pocket-pledge, went im- 
mediately out. 

The Irishman sat in the same attitude for some 
time after, often fixing his eyes upon me with an 
anxiety that almost made me break my resolution 
to say nothing about the pledge first. He evi- 
dently did not know how to introduce the subject 
of the pledge until he had heard it called for by 
the man who had just gone, and now was embar- 
rassed by the presence of others or his own self- 
consciousness. I offered a silent prayer for him 
and went on with my work, leaving him to his 
own thoughts. 

In a little while it happened that all had passed 
out of the rooms but us two ; then, as I looked up, 
he quickly arose, and, coming towards me, said : 

“ I would be afther taking that plidge, ma’am.” 

“All right, sir!” I responded heartily. “I 
shall be very happy to give it you.” 

“ Only, first,” he said, “ I have no money now.” 

I did not understand him, and as he hesitated, 
and stood awkwardly and with shame on his face, 
I waited for him to go on. After a moment he 
added : 

“ To pay for it, ma’am.” 


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“ Oh! bless you,” I exclaimed, “ there’s nothing 
to pay for. This is a free Gospel — free as God’s 
good grace.” 

“ Is it, thin? Thank God ! ” he said devoutly. 
I opened the book and brought out the pocket- 
pledges, and, as we sat with these between us, 
asked him some questions to lead him to tell me 
about himself. But he was very reticent; so at 
that time I learned nothing further than that he 
had spent and lost ail by drink, excepting his 
wife, who was with him in a wretched hovel not 
far from us, just across the river. He seemed 
filled with a deep sense of the wrong he had done 
her, and with shame for it all, as well as with a 
feeling of the obligation he was assuming in tak- 
ing the pledge, which he read, repeating over in 
a tone of real supplication the prayer at the end : 

“ ‘ Lord help me ! ’ ” 

After signing the pocket-pledge and putting it 
away in his breast-pocket, he sat with his hand 
over his face for a long time, and often sighed 
heavily. At length he looked up and said : 

“ Would it be too much to ask? But I would 
like another of the card plidges to put in my wife’s 
stocking the night — a bit prisent, ye know.” 

There was a pathos in the tone as well as words 
that went clear down into my heart, and I re- 
plied : 

“ Certainly you can have it. I shall be more 
than glad to make it out. I think it is a nice 
thing to do.” 

So it was duly signed and placed with the other. 


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I gave him the invitation to the rooms, to make 
himself at home there, to attend the Gospel meet- 
ings and join the Reform Club, for which he 
thanked me with many expressions of surprise 
that all these privileges were free to such as he, 
and he promised to avail himself of them. 

There was something about this case that took 
strong hold of me, and I would find myself recur- 
ring to it very often while busy with work that 
should have taken my entire attention. This was 
so much the case that, a day or two after Mr. 
O’Connell signed the pledge, I determined to go 
at once and look them up. It was a wild day to 
be out, snowy and wind}', but I could not rest 
or work for the thoughts of this man and his wife 
that kept crowding upon me ; so I prepared for 
the storm and went out to find them. 

There was need. The door of the hovel — for it 
was nothing better — was opened by Mr. O’Con- 
nell, and as soon as I saw him I knew there was 
trouble. 

He seemed amazed to see me, and for an instant 
hardly knew what to do. 1 stepped in, being as- 
sured I was welcome, whether he bade me enter 
or not. He shut the door quickly behind me, for 
the storm rushed in, and then, turning, he took 
my hand and said with a deep-chested sob: 

“ God be praised ! ' He sent you, sure.” 

The room was a basement, dark, cold, and 
damp with mould. A stove was there, but only a 
spark of fire, and no fuel. visible. A bed was in 
one corner, and upon the side of it sat a little girl 


Our Pledge Roll. 1 1 3 

of a woman with a week-old baby in her arms, and 
she was shivering with cold and red with crying. 

“ Have you no wood or coal? ” I asked in sur- 
prise. 

“ No, only what is in the stove/’ said the wo- 
man. “ But Pat here has been off all day yester- 
day and to-day to find a bit of work, and gets no- 
thing ; and that bit of bread is all there is to eat, 
and not a cent of money, as sure as God lives. Oh ! 
dear, oh! dear, the bitter day.” And she began 
crying again like a grieved child. 

“ And you and this wee baby!” I said, while 
my heart seemed melting in my throat. “ You 
must get into bed and be covered warm ; }*ou 
will catch your death.” 

“ It was so cold in bed,” she replied, “ I thought 
I might warm by the bit fire. Baby is warm, 
the little dear ! ” she said, smiling up in my face 
as I bent down over the bundle she was holding 
so tightly. 

And baby was warm ; for Pat had taken off his 
coat to wrap her in, and was shivering in his thin 
shirt-sleeves himself. He sat on the foot of the 
bed, with so much of honest shame on his face 
that anything like a reproach for this terrible state 
of things would have choked in my throat. 

I saw just what must be done first, and simply 
said : 

“ Well, God did send me, and now cheer up, 
friends; there’s better things ahead. I am going 
now, but will be back soon.” And I hastened out. 

There was a wood and coal office within a block. 


Our Pledge Roll 


1 14 

I went and ordered fuel sent at once ; and, to the 
credit of the tradesmen of our city, I wish to re- 
cord that such orders given in the name of our 
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union were al- 
ways promptly met — did not have to wait their 
turn on the list. From the coal office I went to a 
grocery and ordered crackers, tea, sugar, some 
jelly, besides more substantial things ; and then 
hastening to the rooms, I enlisted one of the boys, 
and sent him with a note to one of the wealthy 
members of our Union, stating the case, and ask- 
ing for the remains of their dinner — meats and any 
cooked food — as soon as possible, with bed-changes 
and anything for baby that could be gotten to- 
gether at a moment’s notice, with more to follow 
at leisure. 

This draft was honored to the full, and it was 
not long before the dark room was warm and 
cheerful, and everything wore the aspect of a pro- 
phecy of better days. 

After all was on the way to comfort that day, 
before leaving I said : 

“ Now we want to kneel down here together 
and thank God for his goodness, and ask him to 
help you lead a new life from this day.” 

“ Yes, God help us indeed ! ” said Pat. 

So we knelt by the bedside where the wife and 
baby were snugly tucked in, warm .and cozy, and 
asked the blessing of God upon them. When we 
arose from our knees Pat said : 

“ We are of a different religion, but I like that 
you pray for us; it has done me good.” 


Our Pledge Roll. 


“5 


“ You are Catholics?” I said. 

“Yes; but not very good Catholics, I fear.” 

“Well,” I replied, “you must go to your 

church now ; Father is a good temperance 

worker, and I know a good many of your church 
people who will help you. There is the St. James’ 
Total Abstinence Society ; they will do you good, 
if you will but go with them and be faithful and 
true. But, if you are a Catholic, you can come 
over to the Gospel meeting Sundays.” 

“ Yes, I will, ma’am,” he replied ; and he was 
faithful in keeping his promise. 

Mr. O’Connell began to pick up small jobs of 
work, such as wood^sawing, snow-shovelling, etc., 
our people looking out for him and giving him 
anything that came to hand. He always did his 
work religiously, and could be depended upon. 
The wife and baby were clothed and the house 
looked after, and before many weeks they moved 
into better quarters, and things looked favorable 
for comfort and prosperity. Pat used to come to 
the rooms for a few moments almost daily, but 
usually was too busy to stay long. One day as 
we were talking he said : 

“ Mrs. H. , I find I’ve got to have more help 

than I ever have had somehow, or the old lite 
will be too strong for the likes o’ me.” 

“Yes?” I replied. “ Well, what is to be done? 
What can 1 do for you ? ” 

“ I want to know about your religion. I 
thought to say this ever since the day when ye 
came like the hand of God himself to us in our 


Our Pledge Roll . 


1 1 6 

trouble, and, if it won’t put ye out too much, I’d 
like if ye would talk to me a bit.” 

And I did talk to him, explaining the way of 
justification by faith, and the true priesthood of 
our Lord Jesus Christ; and he, eager for the 
truth, as the “ hart panteth for the water brook,” 
took it into his heart. As he listened he saw Je- 
sus as he is, and accepted him with an intelligent 
faith, and was blessedly saved. 

There was something very touching in the 
manner in which he would request prayers for 
his wife from this time. He would arise and say 
in the prayer-meetings : “ I have a dear friend ; I 
ask prayer for — Mrs. H knows who.” 

This was done again and again, until after some 
time, but long before she was able to get out to 
church at all, she was led into an acceptance of 
Christ for herself, and, with her husband, united 
with a Protestant church. 

His faith was so simple and childlike, so true, 
that his course has been steady and quiet, without 
any of the sharp experiences that others have 
known. 

He knows what it is to fight the fight of faith, 
but has been victor in every battle. 

To-day he occupies a place of trust which 
brings him a good support; has a pleasant home, 
provided with all needful furnishing, with an air 
of refinement about it, and carries a face so con- 
tented, so bright and pure, that it is an inspiration 
to me to simply look at him. 

The little girl of a woman, with the beautiful 


Our Pledge Roll. 


ii 7 

little Mary whom they call my baby, keeps the 
home so dear a place to Pat that he is seldom 
outside its enclosure, only when at work ; living 
for each other, they are as truly a happy little 
family as you will often find. 

One day not long since, as he was driving Mrs. 
Martin’s carriage for me on a round of visiting, 
and we were talking over these things, he said : 

“ Well, God is good, no mistake. Just look at t 
me now. I am perfectly happy. I don’t want 
anything more, only to go on in the good way. 

I have all I want, with God’s blessing; and my 
wife is happy, which is a good thing for her, poor 
thing ; and the little girl — well, she is a cute one, 
sure — the light o’ my eyes, God bless her! And 

God bless you, Mrs. H , and the ladies, all 

of ’em ! That’s my prayer every day.” 


CHAPTER X. 


E first New Year’s after we had 
opened the Temperance Rooms; 
our ladies decided to serve 
refreshments and receive their 
friends in the rooms instead of 
their houses, giving a general 
invitation to all gentlemen in- 
terested in our work to manifest 
the fact by calling on us. Many 
ladies closed their elegant homes 
and joined the company in our halls. A substan- 
tial collation, with coffee and tea in abundance, 
was served, and a continuous procession of gen- 
tlemen in broadcloth and kids, and in the plainer 
dress of working-men, farmers, professional men — 
our reformed men, of course, and many of their 
old comrades who still remained in the ranks of 
drinking men — thronged our rooms and were re- 
ceived at the door by our President, and from 
thence escorted to my table, where were the 
register and pledge roll, and then taken in 
charge by the Committee on Refreshments. 

A little while after noon there came in together 
a company of young men, bringing in a strong 
odor of the saloon. They were “ under the 



Our Pledge RolL 1 1 9 

influence ” to a considerable degree ; were alto- 
gether unkempt in appearance, with tangled hair 
and beard, and unclean hands and clothing — good 
specimens of the ripe fruit of the liquor-traffic. 

While some “clean gentlemen ” looked annoyed, 
as though this must be an intrusion, our ladies 
were made very glad by the coming in of these 
men, and took especial pains to make them feel 
welcome. Mrs. Woodruff, our beloved President 
(since gone to her reward), gave them her hand 
as cordially as though theirs had been covered 
with gloves of delicate hue; and as they sat at my 
table and registered their names with unsteady 
fingers, I took pains to tell them that the pledge 
roll was “ handy,” and that I would be glad to 
see them again when they had had some coffee. 
I venture to say that none who sat at our tables 
that day were more carefully served by our la- 
dies, and by none was the well-prepared food 
more highly appreciated than by some of these 
men; for they were hungry, and had been drawn 
into the rooms by the fact that a free lunch was 
served to all. 

One of these men, whom I will call Sam Ste- 
vens, as he sat drinking his coffee and eating the 
good food provided, somehow kept thinking of 
the wife and three little children in the miserable 
place he called home, who, he knew well enough, 
were not over-fed or warm that New Year’s day, 
but were shivering in scant clothing and with 
scantier food. 

The reason of this he knew was the bottle 


I 20 


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which was tucked away in his ragged coat, having 
been freshly filled with the money that should 
have gone for fuel and bread. 

He looked about and saw the Reform boys who 
were so merrily assisting the ladies of the Wo- 
man’s Christian Temperance Union in the work 
of entertaining or serving, or who were among 
the guests — men with whom he had often drunk ; 
who had gone just as ragged as he, but were now 
well clothed and appeared as well as any gentle- 
man in the room — and he thought: 

“ This temperance is a pretty good thing. I 
think I’d better join and see what it will do for me.” 

So when he had finished eating, with the 
strength thus acquired to brace up his new reso- 
lution, he came over to my table and said : 

“ Now I want that pledge, ma’am.” 

I looked him over at a glance, and the sight of 
my eyes strangely affected my heart, but I only 
said, “Well, God bless you!” and handed him 
the roll, got out the pocket-cards, and wrote my 
name in the proper places, while I kept-thinking : 
“ How he needs it, poor fellow ! How he will 
need help ! Lord help him ! ” 

He was an intelligent-looking man, and wrote a 
fair hand even while drunk ; and there was an air 
of shrewdness and quickness about him which in- 
terested me greatly. He took the pledge with 
an evident appreciation of its import that was an 
assurance of his purpose to do the best he could 
in the new effort, and soon joined the procession 
moving outward. 


Our Pledge Roll. 


12 1 


I made it a point early in the week to call upon 
this man’s family, as my experience with O’Con- 
nell the week before determined me to allow but 
little time to pass before looking up these cases. 
I found them almost next door to O’Connell, 
and, as I expected, in a condition of wretched 
want, aggravated by the fact that Mr. Stevens 
had been taken sick with strong symptoms of 
delirium tremens. Everything was crowded 
into one little room scarcely large enough for 
any one of the many purposes it served, and the 
tokens of suffering were everywhere. Three lit- 
tle children in the thinnest of garments, the bare 
skin, blue with hunger and cold, scarcely covered 
by their rags, were huddled upon the bed where 
the sick man lay, while the wife sat in the attitude 
of one who had nothing to do and less to hope 
for. 

Relief was furnished by our ladies at once in 
the form of food, fuel, and clothing ; a physician 
was summoned for the sick man, and every at- 
tention shown that the case required. 

I visited them daily, and, sitting beside the sick- 
bed, read portions of the Bible, and talked with 
Stevens about the sinner’s Friend. He was con- 
stantly distressed about the condition of his family 
and the fact that he had so neglected them, and I 
often said that he must now “ put his case in the 
Lord’s hands, do the best he could and trust the 
results to him, and better days would come.” 

When I talked thus his expression was that of 
the most intense interest. One day, as he was 


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getting better, he spoke of the pledge-card I had 
given him, and said : 

“ I have kept thinking of your name on it. I 
could see it as 1 lay here with my eyes shut, and 
I knew it was the name of a friend. ” 

“ I have a better name than that to give you,” 
I replied — “ the name of the Lord Jesus. You 
must trust in his name.” 

He interrupted me quickly, exclaiming : 

“ Now, Mrs. H , what can you mean by 

that? You’ve said it before. I often thought to 
ask you, but didn’t like to make so bold. But I 
didn’t know there was any good in that name, 
only to use in swearin’.” 

At first I thought I could not have heard him 
correctly or that he was trifling with me. 1 had 
never dreamed of really encountering ignorance 
like this, especially in our city of nearly a score 
of churches ; but as I looked into the solemn, 
eager eyes of the sick man, as he gazed into 
mine with his head partly lifted by his hand, I 
knew that he was at least in earnest, and I began 
to question him, and in his replies gathered a brief 
outline of his life. 

He was Scotch by birth, his home being in 
Liverpool until, when about ten years of age, he 
ran away from home and shipped before the 
mast on a merchant ship, and had followed the 
sea all his life until three or four years before the 
events of this story, when, having become so ad- 
dicted to drink as to render him unfit for duty, 
he was put ashore at New York, and his vessel 


123 


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sailed without him, leaving him a stranded wreck 
of a man. He had a wife and two children in 
Liverpool. She had in her many of the most ex- 
cellent qualities, among which was a strong and 
loyal attachment to her husband, worthless as he 
seemed ; and she followed him to America with 
the youngest child, not being able to pay the pas- 
sage of the other, which she left with her mother. 

They made their way west as far as Chicago, 
where he found employment for a time at the 
Stock Yards ; but soon he drifted on, sailor-like, 
and found himself in our city. 

How they lived he never knew. His patient 
wife always managed somehow to keep the little 
family together, while he drifted here and there, 
spending all his earnings for drink. 

He knew no associations but those the saloon 
afforded ; never had a thought of any other life ; 
not a sound of Gospel truth had ever fallen upon 
his ear until he was led to the Temperance 
Rooms, and until these little talks by his bedside. 
His wife was a Catholic by birth, but in following 
him she had gotten away from all of church or 
faith she had known, only that she did pray to 
God in her own heart in times of great trouble ; 
but of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ she 
knew nothing. 

As I gathered these facts how my heart was 
stirred ! I thought : How is it possible, with an 
active Christianity in our midst, that a family 
should have lived right in the centre of it all for 
three years, and not known of the sinner’s only 


1 24 


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hope ? Is our Christianity as aggressive to-day as 
it might be — nay, as it should be ? Will not God 
require the sorrow and sin of this home at our 
hands? How many other such are there among 
us ? At length I asked : 

“ How, then, did you come to think of being 
sober — better — of signing the pledge ? ” 

“ Do you mind the tract you gave me in ’s 

saloon one day a few weeks ago ? ” he replied. 

“ I don’t think I do, really,” I said. “ I have 
given a great many tracts to men in the saloons, 
and it does seem to me now that I have seen you 
in these places, but just the particular tract )~ou 
received I do not remember.” 

“Well,” he replied with a keen interest almost 
amounting to enthusiasm, “ it was a famous tract. 
It was called ‘Jack’s Hard Lump.’* Jack was a 
sailor, and that took me, you know, for I’m a 
sailor myself, and I thought you knowed and 
gave it to me a- purpose.” 

“ J did give it ‘ a-purpose,’ ” I replied. “ And I 
remember the tract now very well, but did not 
know you at the time.” 

“ Well, it just hit my case, anyhow. You see 
Jack — and it might ha’ said Sam just as well — had 
been a poor drunken sailor just like me, all knock- 
ed up, and could never save nothin’; no more could 
I — the saloon land-sharks get all the money — until 
once he signed the total abstainer’s pledge. He 
went on a long voyage and kept sober, gave the 

* This is one of the best sent out by the National Temperance Publication 
House. 


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grog the go-by, and when he came into port he 
had a good sum of money in a little bag in his 
jacket. He was going up the street, past the 
Sign of the Lion, when the keeper of the inn call- 
ed him to come in. Jack said : 

“ No, I thank you.” 

“‘Why not ? * said the innkeeper. ‘Come get 
a drop ; I’ll treat ye myself.’ 

No,’ said Jack, putting his hand on his side 
over the w r allet, ‘ I’ve got a hard lump on my side, 
and I can’t drink ; thank ye all the same.’ 

“ ‘ A hard lump ! ’ said the innkeeper. ‘ Of 
course you’ll be havin’ all kinds of hard lumps, 
if you stop drinking a little ale for your health. 
You’ll be having one on the other side ’fore long.’ 

“‘Yes,’ said Jack, ‘that’s just what I expect.’ 
And pulling out his wallet, he held it up toward the 
innkeeper and cried out: 

“ ‘ This is my hard lump, and you never said a 
truer: if I don’t drink I’ll be having one on 
t’other side ’fore long. Good day, sir.’ And the 
laugh was turned on the keeper of the “ Lion,’’ you 
see.’ 

“Well, that set me thinking, and I brought it 
home and read it to Mary Jane here, and she said 
she wished I’d try it, and I thought I would, but 
somehow I kept putting it off along. I hated to 
part company with my bottle, w r e’d jogged along 
together so long, and I kept putting off the be- 
ginning; but that night before the New Year I 
found the devil walking by the side of me. It is 
true,” he said with emphasis, as he noticed my sur- 


126 


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prise, “ just as true as you sit there, and I saw him 
just as plain as I see you, right at my elbow. He 
came in and went out with me, and walked along 
the street and over the bridge ; and I could not drop 
him nowhere. I tell you it was pokerish. I was 
afraid to go to bed that night, and in the morning 
I was sick enough. I felt better after I had an 
eye-opener and got my bottle filled, and then the 
fellows said, ‘We’ll go up to the Temperance 
Rooms, and see whether they’ll give us anything 
to eat.’ So we went up. It was pretty nice to be 
treated like somebody as we was, and so I signed 
the pledge. I had my bottle of whiskey in my 
pocket, and when I came down and got half way 
over the bridge, cornin’ home, I took her out and 
dropped her in the river; and the next minute 
I’d ha’ given anything to have her back again. 
But I came home, and I’ve been plagued with 
the devil ever since, I tell you. But he’s kinder 
lettin’ up on me now, and when you’ve sat here 
and talked about that Jesus J>ein’ a Lord and able 
to help me, I’ve wished I knowed him, and that I 
hadn’t used his name so rough.” 

As Mr. Stevens ceased his narration I began at 
the beginning and told him the story of Jesus and 
salvation, just as I would tell it to a child. He 
listened with open-eyed wonder, drank in the 
truth as a parched field drinks in the rain, accepted 
it as fast as he could hear it, and began to believe 
in Jesus as his own personal friend. 

He was some time in recovering from his sick- 
ness so as to be able to do much work, but when 


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127 


he was able he began to manifest unusual ability 
to adapt himself to any work, being not only a 
“Jack at all trades,” but able to do readily and 
well almost anything, from mending and making 
over of clothes for his children, laying a brick 
wall, running a derrick, or landscape gardening. 
While he was still unable to do hard work he sat at 
home busy with his needle, fixing over garments 
that were provided for his little boys, who had 
gone almost naked ; and he soon had them comfort- 
ably dressed for taking out with him, and used to 
bring them to the rooms and the Gospel meetings. 

The deep, still gladness that grew upon the face 
of Mrs. Stevens was touching to see ; and the pa- 
tience with which she toiled and endured hard- 
ship, counting it all joy since her husband was 
sober. When asked what she needed she would 
reply : 

“ Nothing more, ma’am ; I have all I want now. 
My man is drunk no more.” 

And by this spirit she seemed lifted above po- 
verty and want such as seemed for a time almost 
beyond relief by our resources. Mr. Stevens 
joined the Club and became an earnest and effi- 
cient member. He grew into an intelligent under- 
standing of his relation to Christ and his Gospel, 
and with his wife, who was converted, united 
with the Church ; and although many efforts were 
made to drag him back to the old life by those 
who made gain off his quick wit and handy adap- 
tation to any position, he went steadily forward in 
an even, upright course. 


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Many were the battles which he had to fight 
with the strong appetite for drink, which was 
woven in with every fibre of his being; but by the 
grace of God he went from victory to victory, 
until his strength became a matter of assurance 
to him as well as his many friends. 

He had obtained the situation of gardener for 
one of the ladies of our Union, and was rapidly 
squaring accounts with the world, as well as mak- 
ing his family very comfortable. 

He was a man of wonderful energy, and carried 
enthusiasm into all his work ; and he had a desire 
to do to the utmost ability for the cause by whose 
influence he had been rescued and lifted up to 
manhood. 

One day, more than a year after his reformation, 
Mr. Stevens came to me with a plan of work in 
saloons which he had dreamed out and had made 
up his mind to undertake, first intending to lay 
the matter before me and ask my counsel. 

I told him it would not do. 

“You must keep out of saloons,” I said, “or 
you will be likely to fall ; and all work that will 
take you into danger had better be left undone.” 

“ But,” he insisted, “ this is God’s work, and he 
will keep me ; and, besides, the appetite for drink 
is all taken out of me. I don’t want it, and }’Ou 
need not be afraid on that score.” 

“You will find that the appetite for drink is 
there, sir,” I replied ; “ and while I know God will 
keep you while you are in the way of his com- 
mandments, yet if you go off on to the ground of 


Our Pledge Roll 129 

the enemy you will put yourself outside his grace ; 
you take your salvation into your own hands.” 

“ But I feel it my duty to go,” he replied. 

‘Then your feelings mislead you.” 

“ Then how shall I know duty ? ” 

“ By the exercise of judgment, together with 
the word and Spirit of God.” 

“ I am trying to do that.” 

“ Then add to that the best judgment of those 
who can look all around this question, and who 
cared for your soul long before you did.” 

He seemed for a time almost persuaded be- 
cause of my pleading to give up the scheme ; but, 
not convinced that danger was in the way he had 
marked out, at last he said with considerable rer 
luctance : 

“ Mrs. H , I must do it. I am sorry to go 

contrary to your advice, but I must this time; 
and I promise if I find there is danger I will get 
right out; but I must try it.” 

I saw that it was useless to try to change his 
purpose, so I said : 

“ Well, if you will go, promise that you will 
report to me early as eight o’clock this even- 
ing.” 

“ Certainly I will promise that,” he said, and 
soon after took his leave ; while, with a heart too 
heavy for even prayer, I waited. I knew that the 
chances were very great that he would report 
drunk. 

The day passed slowly, and as it drew towards 
evening my anxiety became such that I could do 


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no more work, and every faculty was seemingly 
strained to the utmost. 

I went home, and prayed and waited. 

One portion of my house was occupied by a 
young man and his mother. The old lady was in 
her own room, my children in theirs, and John 
had gone down street, so I was alone in the sit- 
ting-room when I heard an unsteady step on the 
walk. It came on and toward the house, then up 
on the porch to my door. I did not wait for a 
signal, but sprang and opened the door, and saw, 
just what I feared, Mr. Stevens staggering toward 
the entrance ; and although the great fear of this 
very thing had been with me for hours, I was not 
prepared for it when it came, and was unwilling 
now to believe the evidence of my eyes, and I 
exclaimed, as he came toward me : 

“ Sam, don’t stagger so ; don’t try to make me 
believe you are drunk.” 

“ But I am drunk, Mrs. H ,” he said, com- 

ing into the room ; and the thick guttural of his 
tone, and his whole appearance as he stood in the 
light, left no ground for hope. I gave him a chair, 
and wished John would come home. John’s mou- 
ther came to the door and looked in, but was too 
terrified to remain. 

Mr. Stevens took a flask partly filled with 
whiskey from his pocket, and, handing it to me, 
bade me take care of it; and he kept talking in- 
coherently on the events of the day until he had, 
as he supposed, made his report, and then he 
arose and said, “ I must go back now,” and came 


Our Pledge Roll. 131 

toward the door near which I had seated my- 
self. 

“Wait for John,” I said; “he will be in 
soon.” 

“No, I must go back now.” 

“ Go back where?” I asked, while a cold terror 
at the thought crept over me. 

“ Where ? ” he repeated. 

“ Yes, where ? ” 

“Well, I guess I won’t tell,” he replied hesitat- 
ingly. 

1 felt that if he left the house alone and got out 
into the street again, with the saloons all along 
the street, and the police who would, some of 
them, be only too glad to get a chance to lock 
up a member of the Reform Club, all would be 
lost, as far as he was concerned. So as he was 
approaching the door, and I feared he would go 
out, I turned the key in the lock and put it in my 
pocket*. 

He stopped and stepped back a little, and stern- 
ly demanded : 

“ What did you do that for?” 

“ So you could not go out,” I replied. 

“You had better unlock that door and let me 
out,” he said, taking a rapid step toward me. 

“ No, sir, I shall not,” I replied, standing with my 
back against the door. “ I have spent too many 
prayers, too much effort ; our Union have helped 
your family up out of want and you out of the 
ditch ; we have all done too much to make it pos- 
sible for me to let you out now. There is too 


132 


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much at stake. Wait till John comes, and he may 
go home with you and stay all night.’’ 

He stood looking at me as I talked, and for some 
time after, without a word. Then, as I saw that 
he was making calculations how to get the key, 

I began putting on my waterproof and rubbers, 
which chanced to be near by. As he saw this he 
asked : 

“ What are you going to do now? ” 

“ I know you are stronger than I,” I replied, 
“ and may get this key away from me, and may 
get out; and if you do, wherever you go I go.” 

“ No, you wouldn’t,” he replied in surprise. 
“You don’t know where I would go.” 

“You would go directly to a saloon and get 
more drink. I shall go with you, for 1 know there 
is not a saloon-keeper in this city who would sell 
you a drink with me standing by.” 

He looked for a moment like a tiger at bay ; and 
yet, as I stood and looked him in the eye, he saw 
there was something in my plan, and that there 
was not much hope of getting away from me, 
even if he got out the door. And soon he dropped 
his hands and stood in a listless attitude, and 1 be- 
gan to sing, almost without thought, instinctively 
“ I need Thee every hour,” and I felt it as I had 
never done before. 

I sang the hymn over and over, he shifting his 
position occasionally from one side to the other, 
sometimes looking up with an air of* determina- 
tion for an instant, then settling back again, until 
he dropped himself into a light rocker that stood 


i33 


Our Pledge Roll. 

near by. I sang on, softly, that same hymn. The 
town clock struck the hours twice while I stood 
against the door singing the same song that night, 
until his head began to droop to one side, and at 
last, with a heavy lurch forward, he fell to the 
floor with the chair upon him. He was asleep. 

I hastened to call the old lady, who came trem- 
blingly in and assisted me to straighten him out 
and put a cushion under his head, which I did and 
thanked God. 

John came soon after this, and took his station 
as watcher, while, with his mother for company, 
1 went to see Mrs. Stevens and inform her where 
and how her husband was. It was very late by 
this time, and we found her walking her floor in 
an agony of fear. I told her the whole story, and 
assured her that her husband would be taken care 
of until he was himself again, and left her with 
her little ones alone to spend a night of such 
prayer as comes only from the heart of such a 
wire. 

That was a night of such watching as can never 
be forgotten by any of us, and early in the morn- 
ing Mrs. Stevens came over, leaving her little 
ones asleep. Her husband still slept on the floor. 
We prepared coffee, and when it was ready 
awakened him. 

His mental faculties were very much disturbed, 
and he sat for a long time on the floor, looking 
from one to another as if seeking a solution of 
what was evidently a mystery to him. We assist- 
ed him to recall the events of the day and evening 


134 


Our Pledge Roll, 


before (I did not wish any of this to escape him), 
and then urged him to take some coffee. 

“No, no!” he exclaimed with disgust as I 
handed a cup toward him ; “ I can’t take a drop 
of coffee.” 

He began- to walk the floor, trembling in every 
limb and evidently suffering. At length he said, 
suddenly stopping before me in his nervous walk: 

“ It’s no use, Mrs. H ; I must have a drink 

to steady me.” 

His wife sobbed, and I uttered an exclamation 
of anguish as I thought : 

“ Is he really lost ? Has it come to this — can 
we not save him ? ” 

“ Don’t say that, Mr. Stevens,” I implored. 

He stopped again in his walk, and looked down 
at me with real sympathy in his face. 

“ It would be too bad,” he said. “ I mind me 
now of all you have done to save me ; of how you 
have watched me, and advised me, and prayed 
for me, and come between us and want ; of how 
you locked the door last night, or God only 
knows where I should be now. You were a 
brave woman. I had it in me to have killed you ; 
I could have done it.” 

“ Yes, I know it. Oh ! don’t drink any more,” 
I pleaded, as all the terribleness of that struggle 
for his soul came back. He laid his hand upon 
my shoulder and continued in a low, candid tone, 
modulated like that of a reasoner : 

“ I’ll tell you what, Mrs. H , you see }^ou 

don’t know quite as well what to do for me 


Our Pledge Roll 


135 


just now as I do. You generally know, but — but 
now, you see, here is this awful hankering. Sick ! 
Ah! it’s deathly. Just see how my hand shakes. 

I haven’t any power of my will now, but if you will 
just give me a thimbleful of the bottle I gave you 
last night I’ll promise you I’ll go home and stay 
there till I can walk past a saloon, and never, 
never go in one again so long as I live. But I 
know I can’t go past one this morning with this 
devil crying for drink inside of me. Give me 
just enough to stop his mouth till I can get 
home.” 

“ That’s truly what we’ll have to do, Mrs. 

H ,” said the poor wife, whose pale face told 

the story of an aching heart. 

I stood irresolute. To do this seemed the most 
terrible of anything in the world to me ; and yet 
I knew if he would make me a solemn promise to 
go right home with his wife he would keep it. 
But if he got out into the street without this re- 
solution fixed, he would go into one of the many 
saloons which he must pass, and God only knew 
how it would end. At last I asked : 

“ How little will do to help you home ? ” 

“ Give me a table-spoonful, and I will promise 
all you ask.” 

“ You will go right home with your wife, and 
stay there until to-morrow — until I get over to 
the house ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ And longer, if I say so then ? 

“ Yes.” 


136 


Our Pledge Roll. 

“ And will keep away from the saloons for 
ever ? ” 

“ I will, so help me God ! ” 

“ And will go to prayer-meeting and church 
just as you have done ? ” 

“Yes, I will. But please get me the whiskey 
— a good drink. ” 

I had started for the closet where I had hastily 
put the bottle the night before, but at the last* 
words I stopped and turned and looked at him, 
while my heart sank. He saw my thought, and 
hastily said : 

“ No, no ; I won’t ask it. Just a table-spoon- 
ful. It is hard — hard — but I will be true.” 

I went out and closed the door; and, feeling 
like a criminal, with a hand that shook violently 
I poured out an honest spoonful of the stuff, put 
it into a glass with as much water, and returned 
with it to the room, taking the precaution to 
empty the bottle before I left it. 

Mr. Stevens was standing as I left him, evi- 
dently trying to hold himself. I went slowly to- 
ward him with the glass, while tears flowed down 
my cheeks. He pitied me, and this helped him 
to control his own eagerness to get the drink. 
He took the glass from my hand, lifted it out at 
arm’s length toward the light, and looked through 
its shallow measure ; and holding it thus, while a 
soft and manly expression came to his face, he 
said : 

“ Mrs. H , you shall never repent this. You 

shall see. I will keep my promise. You are 


Our Pledge Roll 137 

brave ; you are true to us poor wrecks. God 
bless you and help me!” 

He put the glass to his lips and sipped slowly, 
drop by drop at first, compelling himself to check 
his eagerness, until with something like a spasm 
he threw it down his throat ; and then, turning 
upon me with the look of a madman, exclaimed 
with an oath half muttered : 

“ You watered it, you — ” But checking him- 
self as he saw me cover my face with my hands 
and drop on my knees beside a chair, he asked 
gently, putting his hand on my shoulder: 

“ Didn’t you know better than that? ” 

“ No, I did not,” I said. “ I thought it would 
do just as well.” 

I had arisen to my feet as I replied. He stood 
silent a moment ; then, reaching out his hand, he 
said : 

“Yes, I see. You didn’t know the difference. 
You are true; I will be. I will promise it all 
over again. I will keep my word, if you did 
water the whiskey ; but don't you ever do that 
again. Come, wife, let us go home.” 

“ The Lord go with you ! ” I sighed, while my 
strength seemed slipping away, for the strain 
upon heart, and brain, and nerves had been ter- 
rible for the twelve hours since he first came 
staggering in. Just as he was passing out of the 
door he turned back a moment and said : 

“ Mrs. H , a man like me never could for- 

get this. I shouldn’t have believed there was 
any one in the world who would have done 


138 Our Pledge Roll. 

all this to save me. Don’t fret; I’ll keep my 
promise.” 

And he did. He took the whole lesson home 
and profited by it. He returned to God with it 
all, humbly seeking pardon and grace through 
Christ, and was strengthened and kept. But he 
had to fight the long fight over again with the 
awakened demon of appetite ; but by watchful- 
ness and care about his company, and diligent 
attention to his work, and constant prayer and 
trust in God, he was able to overcome, and has 
become one of our best and noblest workers in 
his quiet sphere for the reformation of men. 

In the course of his correspondence with his 
friends in Liverpool, England, he told the whole 
story of his own reformation and conversion and 
the change in his home. He gave accounts of the 
Reform Club, and its members and work; and 
one day he received a letter asking for the Club 
pledge and constitution, with instructions for 
organization and work. 

He sent them at once, and in course of a few 
weeks we were all made happy in hearing of the 
formation of a Club of about forty men, his old 
friends and cronies, who had signed the same 
pledge he had taken. 

Our readers can imagine the interest with 
which Mr. Stevens watches the growth of this 
seedling of Gospel temperance planted m his 
native soil, and we ask the prayers of all who read 
this for our Club of reformed men over the sea. 


CHAPTER XI. 


.ERE is a name upon my Pledge 
Roll which is associated with so 
many other names, and about 
which gathers so much of in- 
terest, that I hardly know just 
where to begin its history. 

I first met Cecil Langdon on a 
day when I called to see his 
older brother, who had signed 
the pledge some time before. I 
had heard of Cecil often, but it had been years 
since he had been in our city until his return 
home on a visit a few days before. 

Mrs. Langdon was very proud of this son, who 
had won fame and fortune during the years that 
he had been away from home, both of which he 
delighted to lay at the feet of the mother who 
was the chief object of his worship. And as she 
met me at the door that day she said : 

“ Cecil has come, and I want you to meet him.” 

“ He will not care to meet a stranger so soon,’' 
I said. 

“ Oh ! yes ; he knows about you and your work 
for Neddie, and wishes to see you.” 

So she went to call him. 



139 


140 Our Pledge Roll. 

As he entered the parlor I recognized at once 
the thorough man of the world, with the courtly 
bearing that but few acquire who spend their 
lives in the democratic circles of our own country. 
He had travelled extensively, and had spent the 
last dozen years in the employ of the railroad 
king of South America, intimately associated 
with the great interests he had in hand, being his 
chief contractor and engineer. And a delightful 
hour was spent that day in conversation about the 
matters so strange and new to me and so familiar 
to him. 

He expressed great gratitude for the interest 
taken in his brothers, especially the older one, 
who had been a source of great anxiety because 
of his drinking habits; and asked many questions 
about our work which revealed to me something 
of the prejudice with which such a man, from a 
distant point of observation, would look upon the 
Woman’s Crusade, -and yet betraying personal 
respect for it all, inasmuch as it had approached 
his own home with its beneficent influences. 

He gracefully acknowledged the favor of an in- 
vitation to the rooms, and the Gospel meetings 
held there, with his brother, which I gave as I 
took my leave, and promised to attend. 

A few Sundays after, as I was on my way to 
morning service, word came to me that Ned had 
been drinking the day before, and was arrested 
for disorder on the street, and was then in the 
“calaboose.” I could not go to church and sit 
quietly with the thought of the poor mother and 


Our Pledge Roll ' 


Hi 

the young wife who had hoped so much from this 
man’s reformation ; so I went directly to the house. 
I found great sorrow there. Cecil had gone to 
try and get his brother out, as it was known that 
he was badly hurt, and, besides, had been sick for 
several days before this, which fact contributed 
to his fall; and the “calaboose” was a place al- 
together unsuitable for the purpose for which it 
was used. He soon returned with the carriage, 
having been unsuccessful. 

“ We can do nothing,” he said, muttering some- 
thing in Spanish which seemed very much like an 
imprecation. 

I said : 

“ Take me, Mr. Langdon, in the carriage, and I 
will bring Ned home.” 

“ I do not think you can,” he said. 

“ Yes, I can, I am sure ; we will try, at least.” 

So we entered the carriage and drove to the 
city marshal, who said he had no authority in the 
matter, but was sure if I went to the mayor he 
would give me a permit to take the young man 
home, if I would become personally responsible 
for his appearance in the morning. 

Cecil said: “ You will not want to do that, Mrs. 
H .” 

“ Why not? ” I replied. “ I shall be glad to do 
so.” 

So we drove to the mayor’s house, but found he 
was at church ; returned to the church and called 
him out, and I stated the case to him, saying : 

“ He is one of my ‘ boys,’ and I want to take him 


142 


Our Pledge Roll ’ 


home to his mother, that he may be cared for as he 
needs, for he is sick.” 

“ Will you see that he is at the police court at 
nine o’clock sharp to-morrow morning?” 

“ I will come with him.” 

“ Very well ; you may take him, as he is one of 
your boys.” 

This was said very kindly, and we thanked him 
heartily and drove at once to the calaboose. 

“Why did he do this for you, Mrs. H ,” 

asked Cecil, as we were riding along, “ when I 
could not even get a hearing ? ” 

“ Because they know what my work is, and that 
I represent the Woman’s Christian Temperance 
Union of this city.” 

“You said Ned was one of ‘ your boys’; that 
means something, I see.” 

“ Indeed it means something. It means that I 
spare no labor or pains that can contribute to the 
result we are after.” 

“ What is that result ? ” 

“ Making him sober and a Christian.” 

He said nothing for a few moments, then, partly 
to himself, replied : 

“ Well, I don’t understand it.” 

I presented the mayor’s permit to the city mar- 
shal, who was awaiting us, sitting in the shade of 
the building as we came up. 

“ Very good,” he said. “ I knew he would do 
it well enough ; but it was best to see his honor 
first.” 

The door was unlocked, and we entered the nar- 


143 


Our Pledge Roll. 

row hall that ran along one side of the room, flanked 
on the right with the small, dark cells, in one of 
which was locked the man whose only offence, 
whose only fault as a man, was that he had drunk 
of the drink that was sold in the shops licensed by 
the same power that had turned the key upon him. 
He was in a terrible condition, wounded, and 
bloody, and haggard ; so weak as hardly to be 
able to stand as he tottered out of his cell. The 
marshal brought him a rickety chair, and then 
kindly went for water, soap, and towels. I sent 
Cecil with a note to a lady of our Union living 
near, asking for a nice cup of coffee and a bit of 
toast. He hesitated at first about going; but I 
bade him go, saying it would be fully understood 
by her, and it was a favor for me simply. 

When the marshal returned the blood was 
washed from Ned’s face and hands, and his wounds 
bound up ; and by the time Cecil returned with 
the coffee he presented a vastly improved appear- 
ance. He only sipped the coffee very sparingly, 
and ate nothing. But the thought that he was 
cared for and not given up, if he had fallen, served 
as refreshment. 

“ Then you do think I am worth looking after a 
little yet, do you ? ” he asked. 

“ Yes, indeed,” I replied. 

“ I thought about it all night,” he continued. 
“ Oh ! it has been dreadful.” 

The carriage was a small chaise, not large enough 
for three persons, so I said to Cecil: “You walk 
home, and I will drive with Ned.” He opened 


144 


Our Pledge Roll ’ 


his lips as if to speak, but said nothing, only quietly 
assisted me up to the seat, placed Ned beside me, 
handed me the reins, and turned to walk home. 

The people were just coming from church as we 
drove through the city, I utterly unconscious of 
the torture the proud man who was following us 
on foot was suffering. He knew the people ob- 
served us. They all knew his brother — these boys 
had been born there — and they would at once di- 
vine why he was riding hatless, coatless, with his 
forehead bound in a handkerchief, while I was 
driving. The family disgrace had come to the 
front again, aggravated by the fact that he had 
allowed a lady to compromise her own position 
by being associated with it at all. Why did he 
allow it ? He had taken advantage of my sympa- 
thy for them all, and of the influence which my 
work gave me with those in power, and allowed 
me to take upon myself this loathsome burden, 
when they should have kept it all to themselves ; 
better have suffered, endured, died , and been for- 
gotten ! 

These were some of the uncomfortable reflec- 
tions that bowed his head and flushed his cheek 
as he walked home, following the slowly-driven 
carriage. 

When we arrived at the gate the wife and mo- 
ther came out, and, with their assistance, Ned 
alighted and went in, while I waited for Cecil, 
holding the horse. 

As he came up and assisted me from the car- 
riage, he said, in tones of vexation : 


Our Pledge Roll. 145 

“ Mrs. H , I am ashamed ; I shall never for- 

give myself.” 

“ For what, pray?” I asked in surprise. 

“ Fpr allowing you to do this.” 

“ You did not allow it ; you could not have pre- 
vented it very well.” 

“ No?” he asked. 

“ No ; it belonged to me to do. I am very happy 
in it ; now I can comfort Ned and help him, so he 
will not be likely to do this again. ,r 

“So?” he said in a questioning, musing tone. 

“Yes. I will go in, and you come soon; we 
will talk it all over.” 

“ I will come right in. But,” he said, detaining 
me, “ did you not feel disgraced in riding with 
him in that condition ? ” 

“ Me? Bless you, no! How should it disgrace 
me?” 

“ Sure ! Well, I do not understand,"* he replied, 
and turned to take care of the horse. 

I will hasten over this day, only pausing to say 
that as we sat in the sitting-room all together, Ned 
lying on the lounge, that Sunday afternoon, and 
I read from my Bible, and talked to Ned and 
prayed with him, I could but notice the strange 
interest which Cecil manifested. 

I wrote a pledge in the Bible I carried about 
my work in those days — it lies near me as I write 
— and these brothers signed it together. 

“ Remember, now, Mr. Langdon,” I said after he 
had written his name, “ I shall pray for you too.” 

“ Yes ? Is that so ? I shall be obliged,” he said 


146 


Our Pledge Roll . 


in a manner which perplexed me, there was so 
much questioning in the tone. 

“ This makes you one of Mrs. H ’s boys/' 

said his mother, slipping her arm around his neck ; 
then, turning to me, she said : “ Cecil has been 
where wine is drunk like water.’' 

“ Oh ! yes, mother ; rather instead of water say. 

Of course, Mrs. H , those Spaniards all drink, 

and Americans soon fall into their ways." 

“ Always?" I asked. 

“ Yes, always.; at least they eat and drink what 
the country affords." 

“ What will you do with your pledge, then, 
when you return ? " 

“ I shall remember that it is in your Bible, ma- 
dam," he said with the manner of a knight. 

“ And keep it true ? " 

“And keep it true! " he replied, while his fore- 
head flushed at the implication in my question. 

As I was taking my leave that afternoon I said : 
“ You remember, Ned, I am to take you myself 
to the court-room to-morrow morning at nine 
sharp." 

“Must you really go, Mrs. H ?" asked 

Cecil. 

“ I promised," I replied. 

“Yes, so you did. I did not know but you 
might go by proxy — send me, for instance." 

“Not in this case. I shall expect you to go 
also. Come to my house with a double carriage 
at half-past eight, and we will go together." 

They were on time Monday morning; Ned still 


Our Pledge Roll, 147 

suffering, but feeling much better for his rest at 
home and the care given him, but very much op- 
pressed with a sense of his fall and its disgrace. 

His case was soon disposed of, as I answered for 
him when he was called ; and I went directly to 
the rooms to my work, seeing him in the carriage 
first, and exacting a promise that he would re- 
main at home until he was entirely over this, and 
that when he came down town he would come 
directly to the rooms. 

“ May I come in this morning, Mrs. H ? ” 

asked Cecil. 

“ Certainly. It is a public reading-room, any 
way, and I shall be glad to see you.” 

“ I will come back with the carriage after taking 
Ned home,” he replied. 

He came in about half an hour, before any one 
had come in. 

He looked about the rooms ; asked many ques- 
tions about our work ; examined the pledge roll, 
to which he added his own name ; and at last, 
almost abruptly, he said : 

“ If this is what you call Christianity, religion, 
I want to know something about it. I thought so 
all day yesterday when I saw what you did. I 
asked mother what made you do it ; she said it was 
Christianity. Now, this is a different kind from 
what I have known about in Peru. I despised 
the name ; the little tinkling bells, tinkling every 
hour and oftener ; the processions of priests and 
nuns in the streets, and the bowing and kneel- 
ing everywhere. It was all such mummery; it 


148 


Our Pledge Roll. 


didn’t mean anything. And no matter what your 
business might be, if you meet one of those pro- 
cessions you must stop and take off your hat to it, 
or be laid upon by the soldiers or some one. I 
thought first this Woman’s Crusade was some- 
thing of the same, but I see it is different ; there 
is something in this. I want to know — ” 

“ But you surely know something about our re- 
ligion. You used to live in this city.” 

“ Oh ! well, I cared nothing for it then ; knew 
nothing of it. I was only a boy when I went 
away to the wild life I have lived. I know no- 
thing but railroad engineering ; I know that 
pretty well.” 

I knew this man was esteemed one of the best 
business men, and that he spoke fluently several 
languages ; and it was not an easy thing to un- 
derstand that he literally knew nothing of the 
Gospel and plan of salvation ; that he had no 
knowledge of the Word of God, never having 
read a chapter of the Bible in his life. 

I talked with him about these matters as I would 
have talked to any other man of his position and 
culture in the world and its ways, both that day 
and many other days ; for he became a frequent 
visitor, and always this one subject was the topic 
of interest. 

He asked me many questions, but they were 
not of a character to give me an insight into his 
need. They were such questions as are often 
asked, but I see to-day how much more the an- 
swering of them meant to him than to many — 


Our Pledge Roll. 149 

questions concerning churches, denominations, 
the profession and practice of religion. 

“What is the use of praying?” “ What does 
it do ? ” “ What do you expect from it ? ” “ How 

can it mean anything to say over these words and 
call upon God ? ” “ What do you know about 

God ? ” “ How can we know there is anything 

after this world ? ” These were some of the 
questions he brought to me with an earnest de- 
sire to know the truth. 

“ I do believe there is something in it,”* he said 
one day, “ for I do see the difference between 
those who know about it and those who do not. 
Now, Ned says he knows since he was converted ; 
I think he does, for he is different. And mother 
begins to know. But I am afraid you will think I 
am £ popj- scholar. I don’t seem to get any insight 
at all. I think,” he said that day, interrupting me as 
I was talking about how to be saved, “ one trouble 
is, I don’t understand you. Now, in some con- 
nections I would know well enough what your 
words mean, but in this connection they seem 
empty. I think they do not mean to me what 
they seem to mean to you.” 

And then I began to see the trouble. I had 
been using language to him that I would use to 
any gentleman of his degree of culture, supposing 
lie knew religious and Scriptural terms, when in 
fact they conveyed to his mind no idea appropri- 
ate to the subject of conversation. 

What could the abstract terms “ repentance,” 
“faith,” “justification,” “the new birth,” “the. 


Our Pledge Roll. 


150 

witness of the Spirit,” and kindred expressions 
mean to a man like him ? And right here is made 
a great mistake in our teaching often, especially 
among men who have spent years of their lives 
among saloon influences, or any class of influences 
that tend to destroy the knowledge of God. I 
have found that many of the most common ex- 
pressions of our faith and hope as Christians have 
a meaning so different or so obscure to those! 
whom we are trying to reach, as to utterly mislead 
or fail in’its object. 

For instance, one Sunday in a Gospel meeting 
the subject was “ God as our Father treated in the 
form of a Bible reading, which was the usual 
method of teaching in those meetings. I dwelt 
upon the parental love, and care, and treatment 
which God exercises toward us. One of the 
Scriptures was Heb. xii. 7, “ If ye endure chasten- 
ing, God dealeth with you as with sons ; for what 
son is he whom his father chasteneth not ? ” 

I had explained the word “ chastening, ” sup- 
posing there might be need of that — as there 
were many in this meeting who had never at- 
tended church, and had strayed in out of all low 
and sinful associations — and, having made this 
point clear, was going on with the thought of 
God’s ‘‘dealing with us as with sons.” 

“ How does a father deal with his son ? ” I ask- 
ed, when a man who sat near the front, with a 
scowl on his knitted brow, ejaculated : 

“ Mrs. H , that all don’t do us fellows no 

good.” 


Our Pledge Roll, 15 1 

“ No good ? ” I repeated. “ Why not? What is 
the matter with it? It does me good.” 

“ Pooh ! As for me,” he answered in disgust, 
“ the only idea I have of a father is of a feller 
who comes home nights and cuffs ye about, and 
goes to bed drunk with his boots on.” 

This was a revelation to me. All the blessed 
truth under which my own heart was comforted, 
and warmed, and made strong, to this man, who 
needed it so much, who must have it somehow, 
was made simply a source of disgust by reason of 
the associations of his early life at home. And I 
found I must translate the common dialect of 
faith into the only language he and his brethren 
were familiar with, if I would reach them with 
the truth. 

One illustration more, that I may be fully under- 
stood on the vital point. 

A man who had been converted out of a life of 
terrible sin, and who was becoming familiar with 
the language of faith, brought in one day a com- 
panion of his sinful life whom he was very anxious 
to save. The subject of our lesson that day was 
“Working together with God.” I was trying to 
enforce the truth that as God, in his part of the 
work, had done so perfectly, everything being 
“good,” that he expected some degree of fitness in 
our part, if it was to be added to his work ; and 
yet he, “knowing our frame, that it is dust,” that 
our “ strength is weakness,” our “ wisdom folly,” 

1 our “ light darkness,” and our “ perfection most 
imperfect,” was satisfied with our part, if it was 


152 Our Pledge Roll. 

but done with a pure motive of love back of it ; 
and that, in working together with God, we are to 
do to the utmost of our ability, and trust him to 
do the same. I was enlarging upon this truth, 
trying to make the hungry souls before me under- 
stand it, when the man who had brought in his 
friend, and was very anxious that he should get 
hold of the idea, exclaimed, interrupting me : 

“ Mrs. H , tell them that God believes in 

giving us fellows fair play.” 

“ Yes, indeed,” I replied, catching the thought, 
as I saw every dull face light up with a quick ap- 
preciation of the remark. “Yes, indeed; that is 
just it. You do the best you can for God, and 
he’ll do the best he can for you.” I saw that they 
were getting hold of the idea, and I continued : 

“ The best you can do for God is to get away 
from sin ; give your self all to God ; believe his 
word; receive his Son Jesus, and live good lives 
by the help of his Spirit. You do this, and he 
will do all the rest. Give him your heart, full of 
sin as it is, and he will give you his Spirit, full of 
love, and purity, and power.” 

I learned that, if I would reach the heart of 
Cecil Langdon with God’s truth, I must employ 
the same language and explain terms with the 
same care as though I was talking to a child just 
beginning to know its native tongue. 

This I tried to do, and, man of the world and 
culture as he was, man of power over men, with 
ability to reach out and grasp a fortune in a day 
almost (losing it as soon), with the experience of 


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153 


many successes behind him, he sat and listened to 
the Gospel, as I venture to believe he never 
listened to the flatteries of the world that had 
wooed and won him long before. 

But the time came very soon that he was to re- 
turn to his post in Peru. He had not yet accept- 
ed Christ. He seemed still all at sea concerning 
these things, and when he bade me good-by I had 
a sad feeling of uncertainty concerning him and 
his future. His mother had gone on to New 
York City, and he was to join her, and, after a 
visit of a few days, go on to South America. 
He thanked me over and over again for all that I 
had taught him, and went away. 

He had been gone but three days when, as I 
was passing on the street, I heard his name in con- 
nection with an affray with knives and revolvers 
which startled me. I saw the city marshal on a 
corner not far distant, and, hastening to him, 
asked : 

“ Did I understand correctly a moment ago, 
here on the street, that Cecil Langdon is in the 
city?” 

“ He is here,” was the reply. 

“ What is the trouble ? Where is he ?” 

“ He is over in the east-side calaboose.” 

“ Is it possible ? ” I exclaimed. 

“ It is possible,” he replied. 

“ How did it happen ? ” 

“Well, he went into the city, and met some 
old friends and got on a spree, and did not know 
enough to take a train East, but got aboard our 


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train, and got off here last night in good fighting 
trim. He is awful when ia liquor — dangerous — 
and he got into a fuss at the depot, and we had to 
lock him up to save further trouble.” 

“ I must see him.” 

“ You better not take the trouble, Mrs. H . 

You have about done your duty to those Lang- 
dons. They will always be just so.” 

“ But I must see Cecil, for his mother’s sake as 
well as his own. Please let me go over.” 

“ Well, if you really wish I will go over and let 
you in. Stay ! we will ride ; it is too far to 
walk.” 

So this kind-hearted officer, who, in spite of all 
that many have to say against him, was a real 
friend to me in my work, called a carriage and 
went with me to the “ east-side calaboose.” 

This was a more respectable place of confine- 
ment than the one where we found Ned that Sun- 
day morning, but I can hardly describe the feel- 
ings of surprise and sorrow with which I ap- 
proached and entered this building. 

The marshal gave me a chair in the office, and 
then went to bring Cecil. 

I heard a low-toned conversation, and knew 
that Cecil was reluctant to come out of the cell. 
At last I heard him say : “ I cannot see her — I 
cannot.” 

“ But,” I said, for the first time calling him by 
his Christian name, “ Cecil, I must see you, and I 
cannot see you behind the bars ; so please come 
out.” 


Our Pledge Roll. 155 

In a few moments I heard the door open, and 
he came slowly and with averted face toward me. 
His cheek was cut and bloody, his hair dishevelled, 
and he did not bear much resemblance to the 
well-dressed gentleman whom I had known as 
Cecil Langdon. 

“Cecil/' I said, going up and taking his hand, 
“ you must not be afraid to see me. You remem- 
ber your mother said you were one of my boys, 
and—” 

“ Do your boys all do this way ? ” he asked, 
looking at me for the first time, and with a half- 
smile coming to his lips. 

“ Not* all of them ; but I want to know about 
this, and the fact that your name is in my Bible 
and on my pledge roll, and that I have talked 
with you and prayed for you so much, gives me 
the right to know, besides my promise to your 
mother.” 

“ What did you promise her? ” 

“Always to pray for her boys and be their 
friend.” 

“You are our friend. You have a right to a 
[different reception ; but I am ashamed to see you, 

Mrs. H . I could face a cannon or a band of 

armed Spaniards with courage compared to it.” 

“ I am glad you do feel this,” I said honestly. 
“ I should not have much hope of you if you did 
not. But promise me now, as I must not keep 
the marshal waiting too long, that as soon as you 
are out of here you will come to the rooms and 
tell me about this matter.” 


Our Pledge Roll. 


156 

“ I will do so, if you think me worth the time it 
will take for you to hear.” 

“ All right ! What time shall I look for you ? ” 

He turned to the marshal for answer. 

“ Oh ! you can be heard directly after dinner,” 
was his reply. 

“ Well, then, as soon as I can get myself ready 
I will be up— between three and four.” 

About three o’clock he came in. To add to his 
mortification the newspaper reporters found this 
too spicy an item to pass, and they made much of 
it. So it was with a very disturbed manner that 
he entered the little parlor at the rear of the read- 
ing-room and took a seat. 

“ Now, Mrs. H ,” he began, “ I should think 

you would give a man like me up in disgust ; but I 
begin to see what your work means. I suppose 
you feel that it has only just begun with me, and 
I wish there was a chance of making a good job 
of me.” 

He looked up and noticed my grave face ; for I 
felt, not hurt or grieved by his words, but how 
much of truth was under them of which he little 
dreamed, and I thought, “ Oh ! for the power of 
the Holy Spirit to take this man and make him 
the man he should be.” 

“ Now I have offended you,” he continued ; 
“ but I am angry with myself and everything 
and everybody. I wish I had stayed among the 
Spaniards, where I belong, or had had sense 
enough not to take the train for this cursed city.” 

“ No, Cecil,” I said, “ I am not offended, and I 


Our Pledge Roll. 


l 57 


am glad you came right here ; I think it was 
because God is your father that you are here to- 
day.” 

“You do? How?” 

“ Suppose you had stayed in the city’ or gone 
on to New York City ; what chance would there 
have been that you would have come to your- 
self?” 

“ That ’s so.” 

“ Now I want to help you out of this. I can, 
if you will let me, for God will help us. But first, 
how did you come to drink? ” 

“ Well, I went into the city, not intending to stay 
only until the New York train should start, but I 
came across some railroad men whom I had met 
in Peru ; one of them had been down to look 
at our work there. And the first thing he did 
after we had gone to his room in the hotel was to 
order some choice wine. I thought of you and 
the pledge in a vague sort of way, but somehow 
that all seemed to belong to another life, and a 
world that had gone down like the sun ; and as 
he talked of railroad matters everything else was 
forgotten. The wine in the glass made my blood 
tingle. I drank it. I wonder now that I did ; 
but then it seemed the only thing to do. Then 
some newspaper men came in, asking about rail- 
road matters, and one thing and another, and time 
slipped by, and I was kept in the city ; and — well, 
I made a night of it, and it ended as it did. I 
made a fool of myself.” 

“ Cecil, where is your hope for the future ? ” 


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“ I have none.” 

“ None?” 

“None whatever. I wish I were dead; but 
instead I must start for New York to-morrow, 
spend a day with mother and the friends, with 
the consciousness of all this in me, and then off 
on the track again for the South.” 

“ Then you go to-morrow ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ How will you get through the city ? ” 

“ I shall go nowhere ; only go directly to the 
depot, and into the train as soon as it is open.” 

So many things were suggested to my mind for 
a few moments that I was silent, and he almost 
startled me by asking abruptly yet softly : 

“ Can you pray for me ? ” 

“ Oh ! yes,” I replied. “ I do— I will. Shall I 
pray for you now ? ” 

“ Yes, please. I think it will do me good.” 

So I knelt ; he did not at first, but after a few 
moments he, for the first time probably in his life, 
bowed before the Lord, while I besought the 
blessings of genuine conviction and the salvation 
of God for him. 

When he arose he asked for my Bible. I went 
out, and took it from the table where it lay, and 
brought it to him. He found the page where his 
name was written with that of his three brothers, 
and, taking a pen, he wrote “ Sept. 2 ” against his 
name. If you should open that Bible to-day you 
would find it there. 

“ There,” he said, “ I renew that pledge, knowing 


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something of what it means, as I did not before. I 
shall try to keep it. I shall not let this star sink 
out of sight again. I will try to climb high 
enough to keep it always in range.” 

“ God bless you ! ” I said. “ Remember I shall 
pray for you daily.” 

“ I shall not forget.” 

He left the next morning for New York, and in 
a few days a card came announcing his “ safe ” ar-j 
rival, and also stating that his mother was sick 
and he should stay with her until she was better. 
This was followed by another in a few days ; and 
after that they came very often, telling how his 
mother failed and he was nursing her. Then 
came one saying that she was dying, trusting in 
Jesus ; then a telegram that she had gone, leav- 
ing only the clay in their hands, which Cecil would 
bring home for interment. 

It was a sad day when we met the loved re- 
mains at the train and followed them to the ceme- 
tery. 

These boys loved their mother with a chivalric 
devotion that was beautiful to see, and her loss 
was a bitter one to them. 

Cecil seemed to have no thought, however, only 
to see that the remains were properly cared for, 
until the casket was deposited oveV the grave and 
was about being lowered to its place. Then sud- 
denly, with the look of one abruptly awakening, 
he lifted his head and turned his eyes about upon 
the scene, taking in the truth for the first time, 
and his composure gave way utterly. He came 


i6o Our Pledge Roll. 

over to me, as I stood just on tne side opposite, 
and, laying his head upon my shoulder, sobbed 
aloud. 

The casket was lowered, the clods fell upon it, 
and the voice of the minister arose softly and 
tenderly in the words of prayer and benediction ; 
and we turned away, leaving the brave and weary 
heart, that had broken under its burden of anxiety 
for her sons, quietly at rest. 

“ Mother sent a message to you, Mrs. H 

said Cecil, as we lingered a moment. “ She told 
me not to write it but to give it to you. She said, 

‘ Tell Mrs. H I give her all my boys ; tell her 

to pray for them always just as though they were 
her own ! ’ ” 

Cecil,” I said, “ I do pray for you all — I shall. 
But what are you going to do with my prayers? 
Will you let the Lord answer them ? ” 

“ Only teach me how, and I will,” he replied. 
“ I have much to learn yet, but 1 have also learned 
much. Things look very different than they did 
when I first came home a few months ago. I 
learned something beside mother’s sick-bed. I 
think I am different somewhat myself. Now I 
must go. I shall start to-morrow morning again 
for Peru. I have nothing now to hold me a mo- 
ment but this grave. May I come and see you at 
the rooms again before I go?” 

“ Certainly. I should expect you to do so.” 

“ I will come down about half-past nine and 
spend the last hour before train-time.” 

When I went home from the rooms that evening 


Our Pledge Roll. 161 

I took a small pocket Bible with me, from a sup- 
ply I had for use in my work which had been 
given me by an earnest Christian man. It was a 
neat but not expensive copy, and I spent a large 
portion of the night in marking it with ink, and 
turned- down leaves, and a cord of scarlet silk 
thread. I prayed over it also, and asked God to 
give that little copy of his own Word especial 
power from his Spirit, for I felt it had work to do. 

I took it with me in the morning to the rooms. 
Cecil came at the time set, and we spent that hour 
in earnest conversation about the things pertain- 
ing to eternal life. I handed him the little book, 
saying : 

“ Promise me, Cecil, that you will read this 
every day, following the scarlet line and asking 
God to teach you.” 

“ I will read it,” he said, “ but I shall need to be 
taught. It is a dark book to me. I read it a 
good deal to mother those last days, and it seem- 
ed to comfort her very much ; but I could not un- 
derstand it. I wish I could.” 

“ The Spirit of God only can give you the 
power to understand it. Promise me that you 
will pray to God, for Jesus’ sake, to teach you. 
Pray every night, and I will pray for you. When 
I first go home from the rooms every day, I will 
go into my study and pray for you.” 

“ I will promise,” he said. “ I will pray as well 
as read this book, and I can never forget. I am 
glad now that I came home.” 

“ I feel,” I said, “ that you are going right into 


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the very jaws of the lions that lie in wait for your 
soul to destroy it. You will find yourself in 
another world again, a world full of temptations 
to every sin — bad men, impure women, drink and 
profanity — a world almost without God. And yet 
I do know there is power in God and his Word to 
keep you from falling, if you will but seek him 
with all your heart and let his Spirit live its life in 
you. And there is no other hope. This is your, 
one only chance/’ 

“ I believe you, Mrs. H , and as far as I un- 

derstand you I intend to do ; and all that I can 
learn from this book or the Spirit of God, about 
whom you have spoken so much, but about whom 
I know as yet so little, I will do as well as I can.” 

We prayed together that day before he had to 
leave, and somehow I felt that the Spirit of God 
was very near us. 

As he bade me good-by he said : 

“ Mrs. H , I shall probably never return ; I 

shall never see you again ; but if I ever learn 
what it means to be a Christian it will be because 
I came home and learned these things of you. 
Pray for me, as mother said, and remember me as 
one of your ‘ boys.’ ” 

So he left me, and I never heard from him 
again until more than a year had passed. One 
day in March, as I was many hundred miles 
from home on a brief trip, a letter came from 
New York, forwarded from home, opening which 
I read : 

“We have to-day taken the remains of Cecil 


Our Pledge Roll, 163 

Langdon to the cars that are to take them home 
for interment beside those of his mother.” 

I will not give the whole letter, which was writ- 
ten by a gentleman well known as a man of 
wealth and influence, both in Christian and busi- 
ness circles, in the great metropolis, and who was 
also interested in the progress of the Peruvian 
States, and thus was in a situation to know the 
subject of this sketch intimately. I will only give 
its concluding statement, and then finish the story 
as I gathered it from various sources. The letter 
said : 

“Just before he breathed his last Cecil beck- 
oned to me as I stood at the foot of his cot. I 
went to his side, and, as I pressed my ear to his 

dying lips, he whispered: 1 Write to Mrs. H 

and tell her that all is well; her prayers for me 
are fully answered.’ ” 

It seems that, soon after his return to his work, 
which was that of engineering the new Peruvian 
railroad, he was taken sick with malarial fever, 
and, with his whole system suffering from the 
debilitating effects of the life he had lived, he was 
a prey to disease, which took fast hold of him ; 
and, burning with fever and freezing with chills, 
his strength wasted away through all the weary 
months of the year, summer and winter, until the 
New Year found him upon the verge cf the grave 
and longing for home. 

The only place that could be found for him in 
the wild region where he was, was a corner of a 
Spanish saloon, on a heap of straw. Here, sur- 


164 


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rounded by every influence which was evil and 
soul-destroying, he proved the power of the God 
whose grace he had been seeking blindly but 
honestly, and, with his Bible for his constant com- 
panion, single-handed and alone he beat back the 
powers of sin and learned what it “ meant to be- 
come a Christian.” 

When he became too weak to read he would 
take the book from under his head, where he kept 
it, many times a jday, and look at it, turning its 
leaves, and would say: “Yes, I have found it. I 
traced it out by the scarlet line.” 

The longing for home became so great, as the 
assurance came that he must die, that it seemed he 
would almost take wing. His attendants told him 
he could not endure the journey ; but at last, 
yielding to his entreaties, they bore him cn a lit- 
ter to the seaport. A ship was standing out, 
about to set sail for New York, but the sea was so 
rough that Cecil was told he could not get aboard. 
Great waves were rolling in, and the small boat 
that was to take the last cargo out was tossed like 
a toy upon the waters. 

He lifted himself, with a great effort, to his el- 
bow on the cot where he reclined, and, reaching 
out his emaciated hand toward the ship, he cried : 

“ Oh ! let me go. Let me go home before I die.” 

“ He must go,” said the sailors, touched with 
pity for him ; and so, taking him on their shoul- 
ders, they carried him aboard. 

He had a companion who sailed with him and 
cared for him. He stood the journey better than 


Our Pledge Roll 


165 

expected, but was very low when they arrived, 
and, because of his disease, he was placed in qua- 
rantine, in a hospital, where loving friends gather- 
ed around him to care for him ; and there, before 
a week had elapsed, he passed away. 

One who stood beside him to the last said, in a 
letter from which I quote : “ I have seen many, 
some dear to me, pass from earth in the triumphs 
of the Christian faith, but none who gave a bet- 
ter or more glorious testimony of victory than did 
Cecil Langdon.” 

His young brother was beside him, and, as he 
began to feel the approach of death, he said : 

“ Willie, lift my head up on your shoulder, and 
see if I don’t meet Jesus with a smile.” 

And so he did. With joy lighting up every 
feature of his noble face, he passed out of the life 
that had known so much of sin, so much of what 
the world calls success ; finding in that which to 
the unbeliever is only an irretrievable disaster the 
beginning of rapture such as the fulness of earth 
could never give, and of successes such as the 
world would never dare promise. 

A few days after his burial I returned home, and, 
taking a carriage, I went for Ned, and we drove 
together to the cemetery ; and there, beside that 
new grave, I reviewed all I had known of him 
whose dust was garnered beneath to await the 
resurrection, and I thanked God for the record 
of his redemption, and for the power of the Word 
of God and his Spirit, by which the miracle had 
been wrought. 


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Our Pledge Roll. 

There, beside that grave, I consecrated myself 
newly to God and his work for the fallen, and 
turned away from it with strengthened faith in 
the power of the Gospel. 

And to-day I often say : 

“ If God could work out his plan for a soul, and 
save it as he saved Cecil, with so much of the 
world and its ways, as well as its wisdom, woven 
into heart and brain and life — if he could, in the 
midst of such surroundings, woo and win and hold 
this man’s heart, there is no man or woman for 
whom there is not hope and a chance of eternal 
life.” 

I can never despair of any as long it is written 
that Cecil Langdon is a glorified spirit in the 
home of the pure. 


CHAPTER XII. 


MET the prodigal son one day at 
a Sunday-school picnic held in one 
of the beautiful groves that envi- 
ron our city. His name is on my 
pledge roll. I will tell you how it 
happened, and what came of it. 

A picnic was a rare thing for me 
those days, as my work crowded 
every hour of the seven days, and 
occupied all thought and energy. 
I seemed to have left the world 
where picnics grow. But that pure morning a 
bevy of girls, fair and sweet as the day itself, came 
into the rooms and almost literally carried me off, 
insisting that “ temperance be laid aside for one 
day while I have a good time.” 

I slipped a small pocket-pledge book into my 
pocket, and accompanied my young friends in 
their search for a good time. We found it — a 
day filled with joyous association with congenial 
spirits, in one of nature’s most bewitching haunts 
by the side of the beautiful river that makes the 
ground it waters classic. 

When it came lunch-time I found myself in the 
midst of a company of young men and maidens, 
and we broke bread (and cake) together in most 
approved picnic style. While we were chatting 

167 



i68 


Our Pledge Roll. 

and eating merrily as need be, we noticed a half- 
dozen young men strolling toward the ground. 
One of them was Willie Langdon, who had signed 
the pledge in my Bible with his brothers. I knew 
his companions, except one who was a stranger, 
and I knew they all needed to keep a temperance 
pledge. • They were evidently aimless as they 
sauntered along ; and I thought at once of the lit- 
tle book in my pocket, and immediately formed a 
purpose and plan of winning those young men to 
better lives, if possible. I knew I could depend 
on Willie’s help ; and, indeed, I suspected he had 
invited his friends to the ground (his mother, Ned 
and his wife, and Cecil were there) for the pur- 
pose of bringing them under temperance influ- 
ences. So I said to the young people about me : 

“ Girls and boys, I have just found something 
for you to do.” 

“We are pretty busy now,” said one of the 
boys, holding up a piece of cake in one hand and 
a tart in the other. 

“ So I see ; but I only intend teaching you the 
legitimate uses of pie, cake, picnic, etc. Do you 
see those young men coming toward us?” 

“ Those with young Langdon? Yes.’’ 

“ Now, I propose that you invite them, girls, to 
join our circle, give them some lunch, and then 
we will pass around a certain little book I have in 
my pocket which you have all seen before to- 
day.” 

“ Good ! good ! ” replied several voices, and they 
began at once to get ready for action. 


Our Pledge Roll, 


169 


“ I will call for two volunteers to take my mes- 
sage to them. You can give the invitation in my 
name, and that relieves you from all obligation 
after this time.” 

Two young ladies, lovely girls, pure and sweet as 
ever graced a home, volunteered, and went, arm- 
in-arm, toward the group, who were standing 
together looking toward us. 

They gave them the invitation, from me, to 
lunch, and then turned and came back as they 
went, leaving the young men to follow if they 
chose. 

They stood a moment in consultation, then came 
slowly, some of them almost reluctantly, and 
seated themselves on the grass a little one side of 
our circle. I went to them, shook hands with 
each, was introduced to the stranger, whom I will 
call Fred Gaylord, and asked them to come up 
into our circle ; and after a few moments, by 
dint of some urging of our welcome upon them, 
they were prevailed upon to join us, and were 
soon made to feel quite at home in discussing the 
merit of sandwiches, chocolate and jelly-cake, and 
all the delicacies of the season with which our 
cloth was spread. 

It was an interesting study for me, as for a few 
moments I sat and watched the manner in which 
these two parties of young people met each other ; 
and I could but think that there did arise in the 
hearts of those young men, some of whom had 
come into the presence of real womanly purity 
and sweetness for almost the first time, a faint but 


170 


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real desire to be pure as they, and worthy to go 
in and out of this charmed circle at will. 

I could but especially notice Gaylord. He had 
a seedy appearance as to his clothes, and there 
was a melancholy air about him, and he ate 
greedily, which fact, with his thin face and ea- 
ger eyes, suggested either hunger or illness. I 
thought he might have been on a long spree ; and 
yet there was something about his whole manner, 
as he watched the manly young fellows of our 
party, and the beautiful girls, who really did very 
nobly at entertaining my guests, which made me 
feel that he belonged by right to our side of the 
group, although he had evidently wandered far 
from Sunday-school influences. 

As the lunch was being finished I took my 
pledge book from my pocket, and, holding it up, 
exclaimed : 

“ Now, boys and girls, I have you just where I 
want you ; and I propose before we break up our 
circle that we all — can you guess? did you have 
an idea what I should do to you if I came? — 
that we all 4 Sign, sign the pledge, boys ’ and girls ; 
what do you say ? ” 

“ Capital ! ” “ Agreed ! ” came in a chorus with 

an enthusiastic clapping of hands, which was con- 
tagious and was taken up by our guests, except- 
ing Gaylord, who looked very’ sober, and met my 
look, as I turned to him, with downcast eyes. 

“ Now,” I said, “ I shall not urge any of you to 
sign, or even ask y 7 ou any more ; but you know 
you must take the consequences of having a real 


Our Pledge Roll. 171 

old temperance woman in your midst. I will 
hand the book to Minnie here, and it can be 
passed along and around the circle, and, if you 
will sign, all right, and thank you ; if not, well, 
just think it over and get ready for next time.” 

The girls had all signed, our boys were all 
temperance boys, and Willie Langdon was inte- 
rested for his friends, So the little book had a 
merry trip around our circle. As it approached 
our guests, being in the hands of a bright and 
lovely girl who sat next this group, two or three 
feet removed from Gaylord, I could see how a 
bright red spot came into his cheek and an anxious 
look to his brow, while his eyes seemed to grow 
small at first with the sell-centred thoughts that 
were almost written in his face ; then suddenly, as 
the beautiful girl — who had been toying with book 
and pencil as if undecided about the matter her- 
self, but really to gain time and self-possession 
before she made that move that would win or lose 
in this little game — as she turned and handed out 
book and pencil to him, with the page open where 
stood her own name, his whole face seemed to 
change, expressing the quick resolve that had 
come to life in his heart ; his eyes grew wide and 
bright ; a little tremulous movement vibrated over 
his mouth ; and giving me a quick, expressive 
glance, he took the book and wrote his name, 
deliberately, slowly, and quietly passed it to the 
next. Every name went down upon that page, 
and the book passed back to me. My heart was 
full; but I thought best to break the spell of 


172 Our Pledge Roll, 

almost tearful suspense that had sobered us all for 
a time, and so, gaily saying, “ Now let us close 
our little temperance meeting by singing ‘ Hold 
the Fort,’ ” at once began to sing. The song was 
taken up all over the ground, and we arose and 
began to move about and change our places. 
The girls went to putting away the remains of 
our lunch, the young men officiously helping, 
while I went over to the group of strangers and> 
talked with them, telling them about the Tempe- 
rance Rooms, and inviting them to be at home 
among us, enjoy the reading-room with all its 
privileges, and attend the Gospel meetings. 

They all promised, and after assuring them of 
the personal interest I should have in them each 
from this time, since their names were on my 
pledge roll, I left them to find their own means of 
enjoyment, while I returned to the city to my 
work. 

My mind was filled with interest in these six 
young men, some of whom had never yet really had 
a chance for manhood, and to whom such a thing 
as purity had been an unknown quantity all their 
lives — the unknown quantity so essential to the sum 
total of the success and happiness they were vague- 
ly seeking to obtain from the problem of life as it 
had been given them to work out — the unknown 
quantity fitly represented by the cross of self- 
denial in this present evil world. 

One of these young men was the young brother 
of a saloon-keeper, another was his bar- tender, 
and all were more or less entangled in these same 


173 


Our Pledge Roll, 

influences. What can be done for them to really 
save them? was the important question of the 
hour. 

A gentleman of wealth, an earnest Christian, 
who had witnessed at a little distance the scene of 
the pledge-signing at the picnic, came to me with 
an offer of a Bible for each as a token of this 
act, which I should give them in the name of the 
Gospel. 

In those days we often sent bouquets of flowers 
to our pledged men ; so the next day I started out 
with Bibles and bouquets to call upon these boys 
in their homes or places of business. In the 
course of the morning I called at the saloon to see 
the bar-tender, and found Gaylord there standing 
before the bar. 

I had been enquiring for him, and none of the 
boys who were with him seemed to know much 
about him, except that he was a stranger in the 
city. 

I was glad to find him, although sorry to find 
him in the saloon. I left the Bible and a bouquet 
for the bar-tender, advising him to find other 
work, and then, turning and taking Gaylord by 
the arm, I said : “ This is no place for you. Come, 
I want to have a talk with you.” I led him out in- 
to the hall, into a corner where we could converse 
without interruption. 

“ Don’t you know that is no place for you,” I 
said, “if you intend to keep your pledge? — and I 
thought you took it with that purpose.” 

“ I did,” he replied in a very despondent tone, 


174 Our Pledge Roll. 

“ and wish I could ; but I suppose I ought not to 
have taken it.” 

“ Why not?” 

“ Oh ! because — ” 

“ Tell me about yourself,” I said, as he hesitated, 
and tried to get the toe of his shabby shoe into a 
crack of the floor. He stood silent and trem- 
bling. 

“You are a stranger in the city ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ How long have you been here?” 

“ About a week.” 

“ Where is your home?” 

“ On a Wisconsin farm.” 

“Ah! yes, I see. Your parents are living?” 

“ Yes.” This was said hardly above his 
breath. 

“ How long since you left home ? ” 

“ Five years this spring.” 

“Now tell me about it,” I said, as I saw his 
heart was almost breaking for the privilege of 
telling some one. 

“Well, you see,” he began, “I was the only 
one.” 

“ The only child ? ” 

“ Yes. Father had a nice farm, and when I was 
a little fellow the railroad was built near it and a 
town grew up. Folks moved in all about us, and 
boys. I had no one to play with at home ; I got 
to going off some ; by and by got in with a bad 
crowd of jolly fellows and got tired of farm-work. 
Then I got into bad ways that would take me out 


Our Pledge Roll. 


17 5 


nights. Father and mother talked to me. Mother 
used to always sit up for me. At first I would go 
in and sit awhile and talk with her, just as if 
nothing had happened, and, yes — well — kiss her 
good- night in the old way. But by and by I came 
home after I had been drinking ; I didn’t dare go 
in that night. I slipped up through the hall, still 
as I could, and got into bed without a light. Pret- 
ty soon I heard mother ; she was coming up to 
my room. She came in, and came up to the bed, 
and put her hands on my face — it was dark — and, 
with a queer, hollow kind of a little laugh, found 
my mouth with her hand, and bent down and 
kissed me. Then she started ; I could feel her 
hand twitch. Then she knelt down by the bed — 
she had always done that after I got to bed — and 
prayed for me again, and kind o’ tucked in the 
clothes, and kissing me again — and her face was 
wet — she said, ‘ Good-night, dearie,’ and went 
down.” 

It was hard work for Gaylord to go through 
with this narration. Once, as he was choked by a 
sob, he said : 

“ Excuse me, please.” 

“ There is nothing to excuse,” I said ; “ these 
tears prove that you are not heartless.” 

“ Sometimes I have wished I was,” he said. 
“ But I tell you,” he continued, “ I didn’t sleep 
much that night ; and God knows I made real, 
solemn promises, and meant to keep them. But 
the down-town influences were too strong. That 
was not the last night I crept up to my room, 


1 76 Our Pledge Roll. 

wishing a bolt might spring behind me and shut 
me away from mother. But sure as fate she would 
come up the stairs and into my room, and kiss my 
polluted lips, and tuck me in, and pray for me. I 
could not bear it. One night — oh ! it was a long 
time after this all began ; I was getting very hard — 
as she came in and knelt down I turned my back and 
pulled the bed-clothes up tight around my neck. 
She could not reach me to kiss me without getting 
on to the bed. Her hand touched my cheek ; it 
was as cold as ice, but my heart was colder. At 
last, with a groan that I shall always hear, she 
dropped by the bedside and cried so that the bed 
shook. Then I spoke for the first time harshly: 
‘ For God’s sake, mother,’ I said, ‘ do let me alone. 
Go down stairs to bed, and let me go to sleep.’ 
O Mrs. H ! it was the drink — ” 

“ And the sin,” I interrupted. 

“Yes, it was the devil and all — that made me 
do what I did that night.” 

He paused, while a look of unspeakable regret 
came across his face. 

“ What did you do?” I asked after a moment. 

“ Well, you see,” he replied, “ things couldn’t 
go on so ; I either had to stop short and lead a 
better life, or leave. I couldn’t stand it to have mo- 
ther doing this way, and father growing old as well 
as she. If they had ever scolded or been hard I 
could have stood it, I think. But that night I just 
thought it all over. I fairly ground my teeth with 
rage, and I swore I would leave and go where I 
could do as I pleased without having anybody 


Our Pledge Roll 


*77 


whining* over me. Oh ! it was awful. I see it 
now. I had some good thoughts with the bad. 
I thought I would go into the city and get into 
business, and after a few years I could go home, 
and be respected and honored, and be the most 
affectionate son in the world. I did not like the 
farm ; work was too hard and too much of it, 
though for the last year that I was at home I did 
not hurt myself at work. Well, that night I left 
home, five years ago, and have never seen it 
since.” 

“ You hear from home ? ” 

“ Only by the bye. I have never written a line.” 

“ Not written ?” 

“ No ; at first I was too mad, then I was 
ashamed and proud, I guess.” 

“ Your poor mother! ” I exclaimed, with a rush 
of feeling that I could not control. 

“ Oh ! don’t ; it is awful,” he said pleadingly. 

“ Well, where did you go? Why haven’t you 
gone home ? ” 

“ I went to Milwaukee. I thought all the way 
that I would drink no more, I would keep good 
company and get some good business. I looked 
and looked ; I could find nothing. Once I might 
have, had I known anything ; but I left school for 
the town streets, and know but little. By and by 
my money was gone ; I could not even get out of 
the city unless I tramped. I had to do something. 
I stepped into a saloon and asked for a place as a 
tender. I got it; but before long it was said I 
got drunk too much, kept drawing on the stock 


1 78 


Our Pledge Roll, 

too much, and I was given the ‘grand bounce.’ 
I got it again and again in hundreds of saloons in 
Milwaukee. I went to Chicago, and it was the 
same thing ; finally I thought I would come out 
this way. I came here — walked in from Chicago 
— and thought I would try to find good people 
again. I’ve been looking for business this week, 
but it don’t turn up, and so yesterday I promised 
to tend bar again.” 

“ You did?” I said in surprise. 

“Yes; there’s nothing else, and a fellow can’t 
starve.” 

“ No,” I said, musing. 

“ I know I oughtn’t to ha’ signed that pledge, 
for I can’t keep it ; but I did want to so much, and 
I thought I dare ; but everything looks different 
when a fellow is in the city and hungry, and with 
no money.” 

“ Let ’s see,” I said. “You have been looking 
for business ; did it ever occur to you to look for 
work ? ” 

“Labor, you mean? I can’t work in the hot 
sun ; it would kill me.” 

I looked at him, I presume, with something of 
the contempt I felt, for he quailed and blushed. 

“Kill you to work?” I said. “ It will make a 
man of you. Tell me honestly, would you like to 
get out of all this life, and be the kind of a man 
your mother wishes you to be?” 

“ God knows I would.” 

“ How much do you wish it? Now, I tell you 
plainly you can work. You have more muscle 


Our Pledge Roll 


179 


than I have, and I would go out and break stone 
on the street or dig with a spade before I would 
get my bread by selling drink. If it will kill you, 
better go buy a spade and dig a hole large enough 
for a grave, and lie down in it and die. It would 
be a more honest and honorable way than to go 
behind a bar and kill y ourself and a hundred be- 
sides. Work will be the beginning of salvation to 
you.” i 

He looked me fairly in the face as I talked thus, 
and at length asked : 

“ What can I get to do ?” 

“ I do not know yet, but I will find you work — 
not business, mind you, but work ; it may be work 
with a spade, but it will be honorable — if you 
will do it.” 

“ Well, I will see,” he said slowly. 

“ Very well,” I replied ; “ think over it, and if 
you get ready to ‘ bone to it ’ and work your way 
out the best you can, I will help you. But by all 
means write to your mother and tell her all. Will 
you do this ? ” 

“ I believe I will,” he said. 

“And now go down from this place at once, 
and keep away.” 

“ I guess I had better,” he said again. 

“Yes, indeed you had better; and remember 
now that I am going to pray for you.” 

“ Will you ? ” he asked. 

« I will ; and I will ask God to help you out of 
all this, and give you another chance.” 

“ I wish He would.” 


i8o Our Pledge Roll. 

“He will, if you will work with him and do right. 
Now, as a token of this talk and all that it should 
mean to you, I will pin this little bouquet to your 
coat; wear it, will you, to-day ? ” 

“ I will,” he said very softly. 

“ And every time you catch the odor of these 
flowers remember that you are to keep out of 
saloons and begin to be good, and that I pray for 
you. And what do you suppose about your 
mother ? How many prayers has she offered for 
you since that night ? ” 

He made no reply, and for a moment I almost 
felt that it was a cruel thing to say just then. 

We walked down the stairs, and he turned up 
the street and I down to the rooms. I gave him 
one of the Bibles before we separated, and he pro- 
mised to read it and to come to the rooms. 

Several days passed — two or three. I thought 
of him, and often prayed for him, and wondered 
if he would decide to work. 

I felt that this was the great question with him 
as with thousands of others to-day. 

The great evil which has grown out of the 
drink curse, and which pays tribute to it con- 
stantly, is a disinclination to work. A desire — yea, 
more, a determination — to escape work, and yet 
get a living and command comforts and luxuries, 
has sent many a man into the liquor trade, into 
gambling schemes, speculations of various kinds, 
which -are birds of the same feather. 

Sometimes the first token of grace in the heart 
must be manifested in a willingness to take hold 


Our Pledge Roll i3i 

of some real work ; and where I have found this 
altogether wanting in a man I have had but small 
hope of permanence in his reform from drunken- 
ness. I remember one man whose name is on my 
pledge roll, who had fine gifts in some directions, 
but was so indolent that at the end of years he is 
no better off in his home than he was the first day 
we found them in their destitution. At first I at- 
tributed his indolence to real physical disability, 
the result of his long course of dissipation, and had 
charity for him, thinking and saying to others that 
he would rally by and by, and take hold of life and 
work in earnest. He had a wife and large family 
of little children, and there was the most urgent 
need of earnestness in some direction on his part. 
But months passed, and still he would sit about 
the rooms, reading or talking, letting the fine 
days drift by in utter indifference to their value, 
murmuring at life and poverty ; yet, when work 
was obtained for him, disappointing all concerned, 
either by not appearing on the scene of action at 
all or else at times so unseasonable as to be of 
little use. And while his wife and children were 
being cared for by our people he would resent an 
offer of a job of wood-sawing ; and the best ex- 
cuse he could give for this was that he was capa- 
ble of better things, and if he degraded himself 
by sawing wood or doing any such work he would 
never be able to get more genteel employment. 

His wife, at last driven to desperation, took a 
book agency, and dragged her weary limbs all 
over our city until compelled by the coming of^ 


182 


Our Pledge Roll 

Number Six, who claimed her immediate atten- 
tion, to “stop at home.” And as I visited her in 
her bare room, everything unkempt, she uncared 
for, while he had gone off blackberrying for a little 
recreation, I gave up his case as hopeless, simply 
because he lacked the manliness to gird up his loins 
and chop wood for a living. 

I cannot forget that drink is not the only vice or 
sin, although it does indeed lead the train; and j 
when a man simply becomes sober, and “ doubles 
up ” on other vices, I cannot consider him even a 
“ reformed man.” 

But to return to Gaylord. Two or three days 
after the events narrated, as I was standing a mo- 
ment under the awning of a store, talking with a 
friend, he passed on the opposite side of the 
street. Looking up, he saw me, and at once 
crossed over to the place where I stood. I ex- 
cused myself to the friend with whom I was con- 
versing, saying : 

“ There comes one of my boys to speak with me ; 

I must see him,” so was ready to meet him. He 
looked pale and very sad. 

“ Mrs. H ,” he said at once, “ if you can find 

me any work I will be very glad of it. I have 
thought it all over ; have written to mother ; will 
never enter a saloon again, and will do anything I 
can get to do.” 

“ Well said, my boy, and God bless you ! ” I re- 
plied. “ I will see at once what can be found ; re- 
member it may be work with a spade, but I will 
do the best I can for you.” 


Our Pledge Roll 183 

“ Thank you! How can I ever pay you ?” he 
said with much feeling. 

“ By being a good boy.” 

“ 1 will try hard to do that,” he said. 

“ Ask God to help you ; give yourself all up to 
him first of all,” I added. 

“ I have been thinking about that ; have been 

praying, Mrs. H , and I do think he is helping 

me.” 

He looked me frankly in the face as he said this, 
and I knew it was the truth. 

I went at once to a man whom I knew well, who 
was a landscape gardener, and at that season of 
the year employed several men in levelling lawns 
and sodding, as well as in lighter parts of the work. 

“ Have you any work for a man ? ” I asked, as I 
found him on the field of action. 

“ That depends,” he replied. 

“ Well, one of my boys — a real case of life or 
death ; life and manhood depending on it.” 

“ Can you recommend him ? ” 

“ What a question ! Did I not say he is one 
of my boys? ” 

“Oh! yes,” he said pleasantly. “Well, that 
means a good deal. Yes ; I have a job of smooth- 
ing off that I will give you.” 

“ What will you pay ? ” 

“ Well, one dollar and twenty-five cents for the 
first day, as it is your boy ; and if he proves a 
good hand, one dollar and fifty cents to two 
dollars.” 

“ I will send him right along to-morrow morn- 


184 


Our Pledge Roll. 

ing; he may want some instruction, but be good 
to him, will you ? ” 

“ Ay ! ay ! ” he answered with a laugh. 

So I hastened to find Gaylord. 

“ I have a job for you,” I said heartily — “ work 
with a spade, though.” 

“ All right,” he said. “ I will do the best I can, 
and thank you a thousand times.” 

I then gave him directions, stated the wages, 
and it was a pleasant thing to see how his eye 
brightened and his brow cleared as we talked it 
over. 

The next day I thought of him often over 
there struggling with his spade ; for I knew it 
would come a little hard at first, for his hands 
were white and soft as a girl’s from his five years’ 
idleness. 

Two days passed, and as I was passing up 
the street along toward night I met my friend the 
gardener. 

“Well,” he said as I approached, “where’s 
your boy, Mrs. H ?” 

“ My boy ? Oh ! yes ; Gaylord. Didn’t he 
go?” 

“ Oh ! yes ; one day. He was on hand bright 
and early, and did splendidly ; he was in earnest 
about it and did good work, and I was going to 
try him at sodding next day. But he came up 
minus.” 

“ And you have not heard anything from him?” 

“ No. Presume he’s skipped to fields where 
spades never grow ; yet he seemed all right.” 


i8 5 


Our Pledge Roll 

“ He is all right ! I will find out about this.” 

I had neglected to enquire where he was board- 
ing, and I had a good deal of difficulty in finding 
him, but at last succeeded. 

The poor fellow had nothing with which to 
secure lodging or board, and had found a place to 
sleep in a vacant stall of a livery stable, and the 
barn hands had taken pity on him and shared 
their luncheons with him ; and here he was that 
day sick. He had been so anxious to do a satis- 
factory day’s work that he had overdone, being 
weak, his muscles relaxed, because of hunger, and 
privation, and sorrow, and the next morning he 
could not rise. He was ashamed to have me 
know where he had been lodging, how low he had 
been reduced, and so did not send any word, in- 
tending, as soon as able, to see his employer, ex- 
plain matters to him, and go on with his work, se- 
curing some place where he could live like a man 
instead of like a beast. 

He was cared for and soon recovered. A situa- 
tion was found for him on a farm a few miles from 
town, and I began to feel that he was on the “ up 
grade.” 

Several weeks passed, and one morning, as I was 
going up the street, I heard hasty steps behind me, 
and soon some one stepped beside me and spoke 
my name. I looked up, and met the keen, glad 
eyes of Gaylord. His face had rounded out and 
browned, and was very handsome to my eye. 

“ Why how do you do?” I exclaimed in sur- 
prise. “ I am very glad to see you.” 


iS6 


Our Pledge Roll 

« And I to see you,” he said in a strong, deep- 
chested tone. “ I went up to the rooms, and they 
said you had just started up the street; so I al- 
most ran, for I could not go without seeing you. 

I come to say good-by.’ 

“ Is that so? Where are you going? ” 

I shall never forget the tone and look that ac- 
companied his answer. His eyes grew soft and 
misty, his tone was so deep and solemn, and yet 
glad, and his whole face expressed a joy and peace 
too deep for utterance. 

“ I am going home.” 

“ Going home ? I am so glad ! ” I said. “ How 
did it come about?” 

“ Well, you see, I wrote as I promised ; and I 
tell you I got a reply that about broke me up. 
Father wrote ; he said mother couldn’t yet, that it 
had almost killed her when they found I had gone. 
He wanted me to go right home. But you know 
how it was; I was ragged, and had not money 
enough to get home, or I suppose I should have 
gone at once. I couldn’t bear to tell this to father, 
so I put him olf a little, but determined to save 
every cent, and as soon as I could get some 
clothes and pay my fare I would go. 

“Then I got a letter from mother — just like 
her! — and I almost flew that night; but I could 
ncrt go just yet without sending home for money. 
And what do you think next? Father came him- 
self.” 

“ Oh ! yes ; just like a father,” I said, “ and just 
like our heavenly Father; but go on.” 


Our Pledge Roll 187 

“Father came, and would not return without 
me. After a while I mustered courage to tell him 
all about it ; and I tell you it took a great load off. 
I didn’t know how heavy it was until I had got 
rid of it. Father, just naturally, took me to the 
clothier’s this morning and got me this suit ; and I 
am going home with him this evening, and going 
to work on the farm. Father says that mother 
has gone up into my room every night since I 
left, only while she was sick in bed for a while, to 
pray for me, and has said for some time past that 
I was coming home. And oh ! how I hate my- 
self, Mrs. H , when I think it all over; and I 

thank God that he ever led me up to that picnic 
last June. ’Twas the thing that saved me.” 

“ God saved you,” I replied. 

“ Yes, it was all of God ; and I am going to try 
to be a good boy after your plan.” 

I knew what he meant by this, and it made me 
very glad ; indeed, there was a joy in the conclu- 
sion of this affair which can never be expressed 
until I shall have learned the language they used 
in heaven among the angels of God as they re- 
fjoiced together over the return of this prodigal. 

I love to think of this boy at home, helping with 
the work of the farm, going all day and all sea- 
sons through the routine of agricultural life, as he 
has been doing now for three years and over, 
while the father and mother watch him as they 
would one who had been dead and had come to 
life again. I love to think how his heart must 
interpret the secret, silent language of the most 


i88 


Otir Pledge Roll. 


common tools of his labor, and how the spade 
must be to him something almost sacred. And 
then I think of how his heart must grow warm 
and tender as. nightly he hears the familiar foot- 
steps approaching his door, and how sweetly his 
mothers kiss falls upon his lips, cleansed from the 
pollution of the cup ; and how her prayer closes 
and seals the day, and makes it, and the life he 
lives, a thing set apart and holy unto the Lord. 
And I thank God more and more for the blessed 
work he has placed in the hands of the women of 
this generation. 

Shall a mother’s prayer ever be forgotten ? 

The temperance reform of to-day is the em- 
bodied answer of just such prayers as those that 
this boy’s mother poured out of her heart before 
the Lord in that silent, deserted chamber during 
those five years of weary waiting for the return of 
the prodigal ; and the great event which has set 
these years of our century apart from all others in 
a place high and sacred for all our time is the re- 
turn of the prodigal from the far-off land of sin and 
rioting whither he had wandered. 

God bless him, whatever his name or condition, 
or wherever he may be to-day ! 


CHAPTER XIII. 


HERE is another name on our 
pledge roll which might be writ- 
ten over against Gaylord’s. I 
hesitated at first which of the 
two to take in representing this 
phase of our work as members of 
the Woman’s Christian Tempe- 
rance Union, and finally decided 
to tell you of both prodigals. 
So many of our sons, the sons 
of our Christian homes, have gone astray because 
of strong drink, so many mothers among us are 
waiting in sorrow for the answer to a thousand 
prayers, that I am constrained to give these inci- 
dents for the encouragement of such, and for the 
warning of many young men who are just begin- 
ning to walk in slippery places ; and also to awaken 
an interest in this work in the heart of some woman 
who may be to-day utterly indifferent to it all, 
thinking the drink question in no wise concerns 
her, for her own home is safe from invasion. 

To any such let me say in passing that you 
cannot enclose your homes so securely, you cannot 
plant your walls so deep or rear them so high, 
that this blight of the drink curse cannot find a 
way over, and under, and through to your own 
hearth-stone. It has entered the most sacred en- 



Our Pledge Roll. 


190 

closure ; it has branded the brow of the boy in his 
crib who was supposed to be so securely sheltered 
that no evil could so much as breathe upon him ; 
it has lain in wait to catch the lad just from the 
Sunday-school, with the sacred songs and golden 
texts fresh upon his lips, and has corrupted his 
soul before he could reach his mother’s side ; it 
has stolen in under the porch of the temple of 
God, and has hung its hook and chain upon the 
very horns of the altar, as it has waited for the 
son set apart and dedicated to the holy office, 
and has dragged him from the sacred place, tramp- 
ling his vestments in the mire, leaving behind him 
an offence like that of carrion upon a king’s table ; 
and it has^ been proved that there is no man or 
woman who can look up and say: “All this is no- 
thing to me or mine.” 

I know a woman who made us feel her scorn 
as we went out and in before her in the ways of 
this work — a woman who, sitting in her elegant 
home, with her two sons about her, dared to 
speak lightly and contemptuously of “ reformed 
men ” ; who said it was “ an unlady-like thing to 
be interfering in the saloon business so much, 
going into these places with tracts and such 
things; that the saloon was no place for a wo- 
man.” The time came to that mother when her 
sons staggered into her presence or were borne 
as they bear the dead ; when she trailed the silk 
of her skirts through saloon filth at late hours of 
the night, searching for her boy in the haunts of 
vice ; the time came when she would have given 


Our Pledge Roll 191 

all she had in the world could her sons have been 
honestly called “ reformed men ” ; and now, if 
those sons ever bring any comfort to her heart 
or home, or ever enter the home of the pure above, 
they must begin by being “ reformed men.” The 
only path to manhood for them lies through this 
gate from this time for ever. 

And there are thousands of women of whom all 
this is true to-day. They sit where we all sat 
awhile ago, unconscious or unbelieving concerning 
the great danger which threatened us all ; and to 
such we send out the cry : “ Awake, for death is 
near ; it is looking in at your window, it is creeping 
into your palaces, it is cutting down your children 
from without, and your young men from your 
streets. Awake ! and with us strike for 

“ GOD, AND HOME, AND NATIVE LAND.” 

For several days I had noticed a young man, a 
stranger, in the rooms. He would come in and 
turn over the papers on the reading-table, but did 
not seem inclined to invite conversation, or to be 
really much interested in the books or papers. 
One day he came up to my place and said : 

“ I believe you keep a temperance pledge roll 
here.” 

“ Yes, sir,” I replied. 

“ Can I see it? ” 

“ Certainly.” 

And I got the book from the drawer where it was 
kept, and placed it open before him, and returned 
to my work, quietly observing him as I wrote. 


192 


Our Pledge Roll 

He turned the leaves over from the beginning and 
seemed to study it with interest. After a while 
he closed the book and went out. The next day 
he came in again and asked for the book. This 
time I lingered beside him a few moments as he 
opened it, and he began to question me about the 
men whose names were written there. He had 
found the names of some whom he knew, and I 
told him anything concerning these men that I 
thought would help him in any decisions he might 
be about to make ; for I saw that he was in need 
of the grace of reform. He listened with much 
interest, but after a while slowly closed the book 
and left the hall. This was repeated day after day, 
until I almost was ready to depart from my rule 
and say to him, “ Young man, had you not better 
sign that pledge?” But I kept silent and prayed 
for him daily. One day, as he was turning the 
leaves, he lingered over the pledge on one page 
a long time, and finally said : 

“ Mrs. H , this is a very solemn pledge.” 

“ Yes, it is indeed,” I replied. 

“It would be an awful thing to take it and not 
keep it,” he said again, after a few moments of 
thoughtful silence. 

“Yes, it would,” I replied again; “but it is an 
equally awful thing to live in violation of its prin- 
ciples.” 

“Yes, that is too true,” he said, and relapsed 
into silence, and soon closed the book again and 
left the room. 

The next day, as he sat with the book open to 


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the last page which had names written upon it, 
which was about half full, suddenly he reached for 
the pen and ink, dipped the pen, then sat with it 
in his fingers until it dried ; dipped it again, held 
it poised over the page, tried it, found it dry, 
dipped it again, then laid it down and left the 
hall. 

These scenes, passing through days and into 
weeks, and the struggle of this young man’s heart, 
and the anxiety of mine as my interest grew with 
each visit, cannot be portrayed with pen or voice. 

After many days of thus coming and going he 
came in one morning with a quick step, and de- 
cision on his face, and in reply to my “ Good- 
morning ” said : 

“ Mrs. H , I have come to sign that pledge 

to-day.” 

“Well, God bless you!” I said, as I gave him 
my hand and then got the pledges ready. “ You 
have been a long time coming to this decision.” 

“ Yes, I have been turning it over a good while. 
It was three, weeks ago I came in here thinking 
about it. I’ve been in every day, and tried to 
make up my mind. I’ve been an awful bad boy, 

Mrs. H , and I was afraid I couldn’t stick; 

but I’ve made up my mind to it now. I must ; 
there’s no other way for me.” 

“ Only to believe in Jesus ; and that is the only 
way," I said. “ The pledge will not save you 
from drink even ; and if it did you would be a 
sinner yet until you accepted Christ. A sober 
sinner is better than a drunken one for the uses of 


i 9 4 


Our Pledge Roll. 


this world, but that is all. God hates any other 
sin just as much as he does the sin of drinking.” 

“What is the good of the pledge, then?” he 
asked gloomily. 

“ The pledge is simply the promise of a man — 
your promise; an expression of the purpose of 
your heart. What makes a promise good for 
anything ? ” 

“ A sincere intention of keeping it.” 

“ Is that sufficient ? ” 

“ Isn’t it ? ” 

“ Let us see. Here is a little child who has 
taken a great fancy to you, and he says: ‘You 
come home with me, and I will let you live at my 
house always, and you shall have everything you 
want.’ The child makes a promise out of the sin- 
cerity of his pure little heart. You do not doubt 
this. What is the trouble with this promise?” 

“ Why, he has not the ability in himself to keep 
it. He would have to get his father’s promise to 
make his good for anything.” 

“You are very happy in your reply,” I answer- 
ed, “ for you have said the very thing which is 
true in the case of this promise embodied in the 
pledge. Do you see ? But, to make it perfectly 
plain, let me go back again to the question. Is, 
then, a sincere intention sufficient to make a pro- 
mise good ? ” 

“ No ; I see there must be ability, power back 
of it.” 

“ Exactly. Now, for some promises you have 
ability, power enough to give validity ; but for 


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any promise involving the separation of sin from 
your heart or life this is not the case. To use 
your own words, ‘ You must have the promise of 
your heavenly Father back of yours to make it 
good for anything ’ — this promise of the Father 
has been spoken, and all you have to do is to de- 
pend upon, it, trust it, and tndy add your promise 
to his, and let it be expressed in your heart thus : 
‘As God promises grace for my time of need,* 
I promise, by the help of his Spirit, to abstain 
from the use of all intoxicating drinks,’ etc., taking 
in the whole spirit as well as the letter of this 
pledge. If you will take it thus, and let the 
Spirit of God come in to purge your heart from 
all impurities and to dwell in you, you will be 
able to walk soberly the rest of your days.” 

He sat with a very earnest expression on his 
face. 

“ Will you take the pledge thus? ” I asked af- 
ter a moment. 

‘•'I think,” he said, “that is what I have been 
trying to get at. I was afraid of my own pro- 
mise, although I knew I was sincere. I have tried 
to calculate how I was going to keep it, with my 
own love of drink and of that kind of associa- 
tions — for sometimes I do crave drink associa- 
tions, though I hate myself for it. Somehow I 
felt there was a lack somewhere, and I was afraid 
to try.” 

“ There is no lack in God,” I replied, “ but a 
great lack in you. There is no lack in God’s 
promise, but there is a lack in any purely human 


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promise ; for all human calculations are in danger 
of falling short, and in things of the soul and 
spirit — of sin and salvation — they must always 
fall far short. But here is the word of the Lord 
to you.” And I turned the pages of the Bible over 
to Heb. iv. 15, 16, and read to him : “ ‘ For we have 
not an High-Priest which cannot be touched 
with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all 
points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. 
Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of 
grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace 
to help in time of need.’ Your time of need is, 
of course, just when you own resources fail. And 
in spite of your own infirmity of will and lack of 
power, your promise, taken in connection with 
God’s promise, must be good and worthy of con- 
fidence and trust.” 

“Yes, I see. It all seems very plain now; I 
promise to God and he promises to me.” 

“That is the secret of success. You give the 
promise of a son that ) t ou will be obedient and 
forsake things that your father cannot approve. 
The ‘promise of the Father’ is that he will ‘ deal 
with you as with a son.’ ‘ Like as a father pitieth 
his son, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.’ 
‘ And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, 
in that day when I make up my jewels; and I 
will spare them, as a man spareth his own son 
that serveth him.’ 4 If we confess our sins he is 
faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to 
cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’” 

“ Well, I think I can venture to hope,” said the 


j 9 7 


Our Pledge Roll. 

young man, as he look up the pen and dipped it 
in the ink, and, after waiting again for an instant, 
wrote his name. 

“ Please date it in this column, and write street 
and number of residence there,” I instructed, and 
he obeyed. 

“Have 3’ou friends in the city — parents?” I 
asked. 

“ Oh ! no ; I am alone,” he replied, rising. 

“Then you must be at home here with us, and 
remember the ladies of our Woman’s Christian 
Temperance Union are your friends. Come to 
me when I can be of any service.” 

“ Thank you ; it is a great thing for a young 
man in such a city to be told that.” . 

“We are doing for boys who are here away 
from home as we would have our boys done 
by ; and before you go I want to pray for 
you.” 

He removed his hat at once, arid we knelt to- 
gether, and I commended him to the Father 
whose promise he had taken as the strength of 
his pledge, and prayed that he might be led on to 
the salvation point by the Holy Spirit. Before 
he left I received his promise to attend the Gos- 
pel meetings and some one of the churches ; to 
go into a Bible-class in some Sunday-school ; and 
to follow on along that line to know the Lord, 
and his truth, and his will. 

He was faithful to this promise, and I soon had 
the satisfaction of knowing that he was a constant 
attendant upon church and Sunda3 r -school, be- 


198 Our Pledge Roll. 

ing in a Bible-class of young men under a faithful 
teacher. 

But a short time after these events, one morn- 
ing there entered the rooms an old gentleman 
with hair and beard as white as snow. He had a 
refined and gentlemanly bearing that bespoke the 
Christian man of culture. He was faultlessly 
dressed. I arose to greet him as a stranger, 

when he asked : “ Are you Mrs. H , the lady 

in charge ? ” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“ I would like a private interview, please,” he 
said, moving toward the little parlor, the folding- 
doors of which were open. 

“ I hardly know how to speak, now that I am 
here,” he said when we were alone. 

1 waited, for I saw that he was greatly trou- 
bled ; and at length, with choking voice, he 
said : 

“ It is about my son — my only son. He left 
home about a year ago under very painful cir- 
cumstances, crushing to his mother and I. For 
a long time we could not trace him, but finally I 
got a clue, which I have followed to your city. 
I arrived late last night, and this morning found 
your chief of police, and after he heard my 
story he said I had better come here; that } t ou 
have a way here of finding about young men who 
stray into your city ; and that if he is here you 
will probably be able to help me in a manner that 
will be less trying than a search by the police 
force would prove. This is my errand, madam — 


Our Pledge Roll. 199 

a very strange one, but oh ! I must find my 
boy.” 

“ I shall be rejoiced if I can help you in any 
way,” I said, for the old man’s sorrow touched 
my heart keenly. “ Piease give me the name.” 

He hesitated a moment, and his reluctance to 
speak the name under such circumstances was 
very apparent; but at length he spoke a name 
which was fresh in my mind, and, with emotions 
of joy and thankfulness, I arose and went out for 
the pledge roll. I laid it upon the little table and 
opened it before the old man. I knew just the 
page, and almost the line, where it was written ; 
and indicating with my finger as I stood beside 
him, I said : 

“ Is that the name of your son? ” 

He looked fairly startled at the question, bent 
over the page, then took off and wiped his glass- 
es ; looked again, and, utterly unable to articu- 
late, arose and hastily took his hat, as if to go at 
once to find him. He paused, however, and as 
he controlled his emotions he turned back and 
said : 

“ You know my boy, then, madam?” 

“ I do, quite well, I think. Be seated again, 
please, and let me tell you about it.” 

He seated himself, placed his hat on the table, 
drew the book toward him, and sat with the pre- 
cious page open before him as I told him the story 
I have told you in this sketch. When I had 
finished I gave him all necessary directions for 
finding the street and number, and sent him out 


200 


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with a face so changed from that which he 
brought in as hardly to seem the same. 

In the course of the afternoon the father and 
son came in together ; and as we entered the par- 
lor the old gentleman said, passing his arm around 
the young man’s shoulders: 

“ Now, Mrs. H , I have come to get you to 

persuade this boy to go home with me.” And 
again his heart closed his utterance, and the. 
son replied : 

“ You know something of how it may be, Mrs. 

H . I cannot safely go home now. Father, 

it was there I found the associations that cor- 
rupted me. I dare not meet them now ; I have 

not strength yet. Mrs. H will tell you, I 

think, that I am trying to do right. Let me stay, 
father, until I am established ; and as soon as I 
can go home, and give the go-by to everything I 
cared most for there — it’s a hard thing to say, 
but it was true once, father: I loved gin better 
than I loved my mother — then I will go home 
and stay. I am doing well in my work. I am in 
a fair way now to get out of all that ruined me, 
by God’s help, and I do honestly think I had 
better stay.” 

“Can I go without you to your mother?” 
sighed his father. 

“It will be hard for me to see you go now, 
father,” said the young man with feeling; “but, 

Mrs. H , don’t you think it is best that I stay 

awhile ? ” 

“I hardly know, Frank,” I replied, “what to 


Our Pledge Roll. 


201 


say. I think you must decide this yourself. It 
will be hard all around, I think, if you stay. But 
I can see how it may be safest yet for a time. 
But God’s grace is sufficient, Frank, in the path 
of duty, every time.” 

“Yes; but I know just what I would meet 
at home, and I actually came away to get rid of 
the fellows, father. I tvill do the best I can, and 
go home as soon as their hold is broken.” 

“ Is their hold so much stronger than ours, my 
son?” asked his father, with a terrible pathos in 
his tone. 

“ Father,” said the boy, “ you never can know ; 

I never want you to. I hate myself that it can be 
so. There were great mistakes at one time in my 
boyhood, but they can’t be helped now. Father, 

I am praying God to make me what your son 
should be. Tell mother all about it, I will write 
often now. I was so changed, father, that I even 
forgot that you would mind much not to hear. 
It seemed you would rather think me dead ; but 
I understand better now.” 

“ Well, my dear boy,” said his father, with an 
expression of calm, courageous disappointment, 

“ let it be as you think best. But, Mrs. H , I 

did hope to have his company back East. But it 
will be a pleasant thing to look forward to his 
coming home to stay by and by. Send him home 
before very long.” 

The old gentleman remained another day, and 
then returned to the desolate home and the 
almost heart-broken mother, while the son went 

i 


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oil in his self-imposed exile, striving to build up 
a principle of integrity in his character which, 
with the blessing of God, should stand the test 
of the fiery trial of temptation. 

I endeavored to show him his privilege in 
Christ to be made altogether a new creature, and 
to so have the power of the Holy Spirit abiding 
in him that he should be superior to all outside 
influences, and he tried to understand. But, such 
had been the demoralizing power of the influences 
under which his most susceptible years had been 
spent that he seemed unable at once to reach 
out and grasp the promise by faith ; and months 
passed before he truly accepted Christ and be- 
came conscious of the indwelling power which 
should keep him true to his promise. But the 
time came when, strong in the strength which 

“God supplies through his Eternal Son,” 

he returned to make glad the home that had been 
so damp with the very shadow of death. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


EN John Whitman signed the 
pledge I gave him the “Gos- 
pel Talk,” and invited him to 
church and Gospel meeting, as 
well as to join the club ; but he 
declined all with thanks, saying 
that he did not care for any of 
these things. “ The church he 
did not believe much in; and 
as for the club, he never had as- 
sociated with them when he drank, arrd he did 
not think it worth while to begin now ; he should 
do well enough by himself. He had a good little 
wife to help him, and needed nothing more ; he 
would turn out as good a reformed man without 
these things as with them.” So he went out to try 
his fortune in the new life, strong in his own 
might. A few months after his wife came to me 
in great distress, saying that her husband, who 
was a laborer on the water-power in the tack-fac- 
tory, had lost his situation, or was laid off for a 
time, as the work was dull and they could not 
carry so many hands ; and in his disappointment 
he had gone to drinking again, and was rapidly 
wasting the little sum he had laid by while sober. 

203 



204 


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She wished me to see him, and make an effort to 
induce him to join the club and try again to re- 
form, I had a good talk with her, and found her 
quite an intelligent, earnest little woman, and 
withal trying to be a Christian all by herself. I 
told her what the influence of a wife should be 
in such a case — positive and unequivocal for all 
things pertaining to temperance and religion — and 
that the Holy Spirit in her own heart, a living 
presence and power in the very centre of the little 
home, would assure success. 

I thought that day I would go at once to see 
her husband ; but it was quite far, and various 
things hindered, so that some time passed, and I 
learned that he was again at work. So one day 
I went to call upon him in the factory. I found 
him at the tack-machine, which he was running; 
and as he saw me approaching he slipped off the 
band from the wheel at the right, so as to stop the 
running noise of the machine while we talked. 

“How are you getting on these days, John ?” 
I said, as I shook hands with him. 

“ Not getting on at all,” he replied gloomily. 

“Not getting on? Why, what is the matter? 
I thought I was to hear good things of you, John.” 

“ Yes ; but when a fellow loses his situation 
and everything turns against him, he is likely to 
get discouraged in spite of the best intentions.” 

“ And for you to get discouraged was to go 
and get drunk in spite of your pledge; to lose 
your situation was to go and spend the little sum 
you had laid up while you were sober.” 


Our Pledge Roll. 205 

u It was awful foolish, I know ; but what was a 
fellow to do ? ” 

“ Be a man for all that, John.” 

“ Yes ; but that is easier said than done. Fact is, 

Mrs. H , I have about made up my mind it's 

no use to try any longer. I did try hard, but right 
in the midst of my trying I was discharged from 
my place. I couldn’t see anything ahead for wife 
and the little ones but poverty, and the poorhouse 
may be, and I couldn’t stand it ; so it was a mighty 
easy thing to slide back into the old ways, and 
drink to drown trouble, as the saying is. Fact is, 
I just had not backbone enough to stand against 
the pressure ; and I guess about the best thing I 
can do is to keep as sober as I can, so as to come 
between the woman and want, until it’s all done 
with ; and the sooner the better, I guess.” 

John was evidently very much discouraged. I 
wanted to get the truth into his heart so it would 
stay, and stood thinking a moment, when my eye 
was caught by the mechanism of the tack-machine. 
I thought, ‘‘John must learn from this; I see 
something in it for him,” so I said : 

“ This is a curious machine, John.” 

“Yes, till you get used to it; not much of a 
curiosity to me now, though.” 

“No, I suppose not; but let me see how it 
works.” 

So he slipped the band on to the wheel, and it 
at once began to revolve; he then placed the 
wire rods on to the feeder; the great upper jaw 
came down with quiet but telling power, and 


206 


Our Pledge Roll. 


bit off the wire, transformed it into a well-shap- 
ed carpet-tack, and dropped it out into the pan 
beneath. It was an interesting operation, and I 
stood for some time watching as John fed the 
great iron mouth, that constantly opened asking 
for “ more.” 

At length I essayed to speak, and he again slip- 
ped off the band to stop the noise of the wheel, 
so we could hear each other, and I said : 

“There might be a crank attached to this 
wheel.” 

He seemed to think my remark hardly worth 
stopping the wheel for, but politely replied : 

“ Oh ! yes ; there might be.” 

“ I looked about a little as I came through the 
works,” I continued, “ and was shown the great 
wheel in the river, or rather the place where it 
plays ; there must be a wonderful power in that 
wheel.” 

“Yes, indeed; it moves the whole thing 
here.” 

“ And I saw the power-gauge ; they keep a 
man to watch there, I learn, so that one firm can- 
not steal power from another.” 

“Yes, of course; there is only so much, and 
one man might put in machinery enough to draw 
off more power than he had a right to, and the 
rest lose by it. So they are all interested alike in 
keeping the watchman there.” 

“ Yes; I suppose this tack business is a pretty 
good one, and, if there were power enough, your 
employer could afford to double his force.” 


Our Pledge Roll. 207 

“ Oh ! yes, I presume so ; but we turn out a 
great many a day as it is.” 

“ Now, John,” I continued, “ why don’t you just 

tell Mr. that if he will put cranks on to these 

machines you will run them yourself, and he can 
put in more machines to use the power, and that 
you will turn out just as many and just as good 
tacks as the rest do ? ” 

“ Why, Mrs. H ! ” he exclaimed, “ I would 

be a fool.” 

“ Would you? Well, I do not think I shall 
call you so hard a name, John ; but do you know 
that is just what you have been doing ? ” 

“Me? How?” 

“ In your work of reformation did you not tell 
me that you would turn out just as good a re- 
formed man without the helps that I thought you 
would need— the club, and church, and Gospel 
meeting — as the rest did with ? You undertook 
to do in this work just what you would be doing 
in tack-making if you should try to run this 
machine by a crank. You might possibly lift it 
over a few times, but it would take all your 
strength for this one thing, and thus it would 
not be sufficient for practical purposes at best ; 
but instead of doing thus, you attach the belt 
which lays hold of the great motor over here in 
the river, and the machine moves, seemingly by 
itself, while all you have to do is to feed it; and 
besides that, you can attend to several instead 
of one. 

“ Now, what you want to do in this matter of 


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your reformation is to gear on to God with bands 
of faith and belts of prayer; and the requisite 
power will be applied right along, if you but 
maintain the connection. 

“ God has planted the great motor, which is his 
Holy Spirit, within reach of you ; its power is ac- 
cessible by means of the conductors which are in 
the Gospel institutions — the church, club, Gospel 
meetings — and all you have to do is to gear on ; 
that is your part. God supplies the power ; you 
are to lay hold. And he does not keep a man to 
watch to see that you do not draw more than 
your share ; the only gauge to God’s power is 
your faith. * According to your faith be it unto 
you.’ If your faith is for success you will have 
it. If your faith is for failure you will have that ; 
for your own effort always lies along the line of 
your faith. Gear on to God, John. Lay hold of 
the power; that is the only way to do the work.” 

“ What an idea, Mrs. H ! ” he said thought- 

fully. 

“ Yes, indeed ; success or failure for two worlds 
depends upon it.” 

I “ I think I understand you. I see the matter 
differently, anyway, than I did when I signed the 
pledge. I thought I could go on all right— and I 
could, as far as drink is concerned, if everything 
went on smoothly — but — ” 

“ You could not calculate for the friction.” 

“ No, that is it; I see.” 

“Yes; it took all the force you had to keep 
yourself steady, and when you came to tough 


Our Pledge Roll. 


209 


places you had to stop for lack of power ; and to 
stop is to fail. But, John, God, like a competent 
machinist, has made calculation in applying- his 
power for overcoming all friction of whatever na- 
ture. He arranges for power enough to do the 
work required in making you a thoroughly new 
creature, and also for overcoming the resistance 
of the world, the flesh , and the devil. So now 
you had better take him for your strength, and 
not keep turning away at the crank any longer.” 

“ I guess you are right, Mrs. H ,” he re- 

plied. 

“ Well, will you do it? That is the question.” 

“ I think I will. I will try to do it. I will go 
to church next Sunday.” 

“ Will you pray God to give you his Spirit?” 

“ I will, yes ; I need it.” 

“ Build a family altar at home with that dear 
wife and baby, and get just as near God as you 
can ? ” 

“ Yes, I will. My wife used to go to church 
before I married her; but I suppose I have kept 
her away.” 

“ What if you had kept her out of heaven ? ” 

“ Oh ! I would not do that.” 

“ You have been running close to just such a 
chance ; but God will help you on to the right 
track, and keep you there, if you will let him.” 

I bade John “ good-by” and turned to leave 
the shop ; and soon I heard the sound of his 
wheel, and somehow it seemed that in slipping 
the belt into its place that time John had taken 


2 10 


Our Pledge Roll. 

hold of God by faith and prayer. I knew he 
prayed. I felt that he trusted, and that from that 
time all was well. 

The last I knew of John he was holding on to 
the power, and was “ working together with 
God.” And all this that I said to John that day 
I repeat through these pages to any reformed 
man or drinking man who may read these an- 
nals. It is for you that the power of the Holy 
Spirit is held in reserve. All his vast resources 
of inconceivable might are at your command, 
and there is no reason in God why you should 
not be complete victor over every appetite and 
lust of the flesh, “ perfecting holiness ” in the 
name of the Lord. 


CHAPTER XV. 


the hundreds of names upon our 
pledge roll I have mentioned 
but few, and have come toward 
the limit of my allotted space 
with a great tide of remem- 
brances rolling in ; with scores of 
faces passing before me, a great 
company of reformed men who 
have for ever left the ranks of 
^formed men, and are pressing 
on toward the advance guard of transformed men 
— an army marching on to victory over the power 
of the great curse of rum. And my pen halts, 
stopping at this name and that, longing to jot 
down this or that incident which can hardly be 
left out of a record like this. Facts stranger than 
fiction look up at me from the great mass : sugges- 
tions of truth which should be scattered broadcast 
among the people ; illustrations of the glorious 
power of the Gospel, that, like streaks of the morn- 
ing, shoot out into the darkness of the despair of 
sin and sorrow, and give me a joyful hope for the 
future which cannot be kept all in my own heart, 
but must be sounded as far as voice or pen can 
reach. 



21 1 


212 


Our Pledge Roll. 


I see before me homes over which a wonderful 
transformation scene has passed, retouching the 
faded cheeks and hollow eyes of pitiful women 
and old children, until the bloom of childish beauty 
lias come again to the innocent faces, and roses 
have taken the place of ashes upon the cheeks and 
lips where the kiss of a lover had changed to the 
blow of a demon in the days that are passed, 
thank God ! by his grace, never to come again. 
I see the multitude of men, women, and little chil- 
dren passing out from under the curse, and look- 
ing up with strange and wondering eyes to greet 
the hope of a better time ; and with a prayer, the 
eagerness of which cannot be uttered, I cry out 
for a final and complete deliverance from the body 
of this death ; for the touch of the power that is 
able to make all things — the bodies and souls of 
men and women, the homes of all the people, the 
morals and politics of our whole land, ay, all 
things — new. 

These sketches would not be complete without 
the name of Uncle Jim, the history of whose re- 
formation is associated with so much of the reform 
work of our city. 

It seems a strange thing to me to-day to write 
his name as a reformed man, and to remember him 
as I first saw him. 

His name had been upon our “ especial-prayer 
list ” for months, but I had never met him, that I 
knew, until one evening just before Christmas. I 
had gone down to the street, en route for home, 
and one of the boys of the club was walking a few 


Our Pledge Roll. 


213 


steps with me, when he suddenly stopped, asking 
me to wait a moment while he turned to speak to 
two men who were standing leaning upon each 
other and the lamp-post, which was divided be- 
tween them, and talking in a maudlin fashion. I 
took in the possibilities of the case at a glance, and 
said : 

“ I will return to the rooms and turn up the 
lights.” 

“ Yes, do,” was the reply, and I did so; laying 
aside my hat and cloak, and preparing to spend 
the evening, if thereby anything could be ac- 
complished for those two men. In a little while 
all three came up, and I was introduced to the 
man whose name I had known so long. He was 
tali and well along in years, and even through 
his drunkenness manifested intelligence and a kind 
of manliness that commanded my respect. His 
companion was an ignorant man, of an entirely 
different stamp — a man in whose company he 
would hardly have been found when sober. 

“ So this is Mrs. H ,” said Uncle Jim, as I 

reached out my hand to him. “ Yes, I’ve heard 
of you,” he continued, folding his hands on the 
top of his staff, and looking at me with an expres- 
sion of great benevolence ; “ and it’s a good thing 
you stopped this fellow’s drinking just when you 
did,” he added with a laugh, looking at the man 
who had invited him up. 

“ Would it not be a good thing if some one 
would stop your drinking, Mr. Bentley?” I asked 
by way of reply. 


214 


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“ Well, I dunno about that; when I stop I shall 
stop without making, I reckon/' he answered 
with dignity. “But see here: you never ask 
folks to sign the pledge, they say.” 

“ No, sir ; I always want every one to do that of 
tneir own free will.” 

“ Well, now, I should ask them ; coax them ; get 
them to do it in any way, so they did it, if I were 
you. Why, just see how folks are drinking here, 
and how these saloons are taking in the money 
that should go for bread.” 

“ Well, I’ll tell you what I will do, Mr. Bentley: 
I will not ask you to sign the pledge, but I will 
invite you to come up to the club meeting to- 
morrow evening in these rooms, and to come 
sober. Don’t drink anything between now and 
then ; you won’t, will you ? ” 

“ There’s a good many in that club that I used 
to drink with,” he said, not seeming to notice my 

invitation ; “ this fellow for one,” slapping F 

on the shoulder. 

“Yes, Uncle Jim,” said F— — , “come up to- 
morrow night ; the boys will be glad to see you. 
You can stay during the fore part of the meeting, 
and if you don’t like us you can withdraw before 
the business hour. But we would be awful glad to 
have you among us ; we can’t hardly leave you 
behind, Uncle Jim.” 

“Well, I will go up to-morrow night; and, as 
this lady very reasonably asks, I will go sober.” 

“ And bring your friend with you,” I said. 

“ Oh ! yes, he’ll come along,” replied Uncle Jim, 


Our Pledge Roll. 215 

with an expression that made me smile in spite of 
myself. 

I saw there was no further need of -my presence; 
so excusing myself, and bidding them make them- 
selves at home and stay until locking-up time, if 
they wished, I put on my wraps and went home, 
feeling that another prayer of our women was 
being answered. 

The next evening, true to his promise, Mr. 
Bentley was at the club meeting, and sober. And 
it did not require more than one evening of asso- 
ciation with these men, whom he had known as 
saloon-loungers and thriftless drunkards, and now 
met in the earnest work of their club, to prove 
to him that total abstinence is the policy to be pur- 
sued after all ; and when the pledge and constitu- 
tion were read for signatures, he went forward 
amid cheers and wrote his name, and received the 
congratulations of the boys, who had felt that 
their circle could never be complete until Uncle 
Jim was numbered among them. 

The change in this man’s appearance was so 
marked that, when I met him on the street a few 
days after, I could scarcely believe him to be the 
man who came into the rooms that night ; and 
from that day we felt the power of his influence, 
and good judgment, and sterling integrity in every 
branch of our work. When he gave his name to 
the pledge and his hand to the club, he gave him- 
self. His money, and time, and labor went with 
his heart into the cause. He had somehow, by 
the help of the good management of his strong- 


2l6 


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hearted, sensible wife, been able to keep up his for- 
tune while he drank. He was the owner ot a fine 
homestead in the heart of the city, and was in a 
position to be a valuable reinforcement to our 
ranks. 

He was reported to be an infidel in his religious 
views, but he gave the heartiest support from the 
first to our Gospel work. Somehow I found it 
very hard to talk to him about his reformation 
and about the needs of his soul, as I would do to 
younger men ; for his years gave him, in my esti- 
mation, a rank which entitled him to reverence. 
And while my heart was heavy with prayer for 
him and desire for his salvation, I could say no- 
thing ; only, as I would meet him and shake 
hands with him, I would say, “ God bless you ! ” 
and he would always reply with a look so expres- 
sive, so kind and paternal, that my heart warmed 
under its influence, and I would go in the good 
cheer of it many days, feeling that my work was 
not in vain, and that I should see his salvation. 

Dark and troublous times came to our cause. 
There is a history yet unwritten, which has 
probably its counterpart in many towns of our 
land, of a time when it seemed that hope grew 
faint and faith was blind ; and as we looked upon 
the destruction at noonday, which went on boldly 
and defiantly against all law as well as Gospel, our 
hearts grew hard with suppressed indignation, 
and we cried out: u O Lord! how long?” 

It was said again and again that something must 
be done to make the law respected by those who 


Our Pledge Roll. 


2 1 7 


were dealing out death to our youth, and boys 
even, and scattering desolation all through our 
city. But what could be done ? Where was the 
man brave and strong enough who would dare to 
risk reputation, fortune, and life to do this thing ? 
Then Uncle Jim came to the rescue ; taking off 
his glasses, and with a flash of youthful fire light- 
ing up his deep-set eyes, he said : “ I have served 
the enemy all my life faithfully, and now I will 
serve the cause of God and my fellow-beings with 
as much zeal ” ; and he threw himself into the 
breach with all the courage of a Winkelried. 

I cannot go into the details of this history, but 
as I recall those days, and remember all of scorn 
and contempt, coming even from among the breth- 
ren — false brethren of our cause — and all of 
abuse and violence which he endured at the hands 
of the enemy, the tall figure of Uncle Jim, as he 
went out and in among us with his staff, gathers a 
dignity, and even grandeur, that neither age nor 
infirmity can ever rob him of, in my estimation, 
for all the years to come. 

And oh! how I coveted that man for Christ, 
and how often, as I met him, I spoke out this 
thought and desire in the one short phrase that 
he had come to notice and expect, “ God bless 
you ! ” 

One day as I said this he took off his glasses, 
and looked down into my face, and said : 

“Do you know how many times you have said 
that to me ? ” 

“No, I could not guess ; but I have not said it 


2 I 8 


Our Pledge Roll. 

half as often as I have thought it. And oh ! you 
don’t know how I pray for you. I do wish you 
were a Christian.” 

“ Do you ? ” he said. “ And am I worth so many 
prayers ? ” 

“ Worth them! Bless your dear old heart,” I 
said, as the tears sprang to my eyes, “ I guess you 
are.” And I turned away, for I could say no more. 

We often talked together in our Union about 
this man’s salvation, and many of our women 
were praying for him as earnestly as was I. 

There is a camp-ground a few miles from our 
city, and the trustees decided, about a year after 
Uncle Jim signed the' pledge, and our club had 
taken on strength and began to be felt as a power, 
to make the club the offer of a lease of two fine 
lots on the ground, if they would build a tempe- 
rance hall there and take an active part in the an- 
nual meetings. 

Uncle Jim was an architect, and the matter was 
naturally referred to him, and it was decided by the 
club, after his report, to accept the offer ; and 
Uncle Jim undertook the work of building the 
hall, the boys agreeing to contribute labor where 
they could not give money. 

Soon after this plan became generally known a 
man well known in religious circles in that sec- 
tion came to me with a bitter complaint that such 
a thing should have been allowed. 

“ That club of infidels ! ” he said. “ The idea 
of allowing them such a foothold on that camp- 
ground.” 


Our Pledge Roll \ 


219 


“ But they are not a club of infidels,” I said. 

“Well, then, what are they?” he asked a little 
sharply. 

“ They are the men we got by prayer and 
faith,” I said ; “ and there is not an infidel among 
them.” 

“ What do you call Bentley, and Fraley, and 
Sherman, and others, if not infidels?” 

“ I do not call them any names,” I said ; “ but 
they are every one earnest-hearted men, who are 
enquiring after the right and true way of life. They 
need to be led and taught, but they are willing to 
be taught ; and you will see those men Christians 
yet. And you need not be afraid of any influence 
they will exert on that camp ground.” 

“Well, you are always very sanguine about 
your Reform boys, and I hope you will not be .dis- 
appointed in them.” 

The work of building our temperance taber- 
nacle was begun under the supervision of Uncle 
Jim, and went forward as he was reinforced from 
time to time by such of the boys who contributed 
work to the enterprise. 

f It was the one theme of conversation in the 
rooms, and the one grand object of interest to us 
all during those days. 

Uncle Jim took up his abode on the ground, 
one of the cottages being placed at his disposal ; 
and there, in the solitude of the grove, alone many 
a night, and often all day, with his work for God 
— for such it was — strange emotions and new 
thoughts came to him from the Spirit which 


220 


Our Pledge Roll. 


breathed over his spirit and thought into his 
thoughts, whose sacred influence filled heart and 
brain, and mellowed and prepared the soil of his 
nature for the spiritual growth that should spring 
up and ripen fruit to the glory of God. In these 
days the remembrance of his past life came pain- 
fully over him, and he hungered after the life 
of God. 

Among the most delightful days of recreation in 
my remembrance is one spent on that ground as 
the tabernacle was approaching completion. 

Mrs. Bentley said one day she thought it would 
be nice to go down and surprise the boys, who 
were at work, with a good dinner. 

I gladly offered to accompany her, as I could 
leave the rooms for a day at that time. 

So we loaded the phaeton with good things, 
and taking an early start with old Cub, who had 
learned the way full well over to this Gospel 
ground, we arrived on the scene in good season, 
and, taking possession of the cottage, made ready 
our dinner. After it had been enjoyed we went 
up to look over the building. As we entered the 
wide portal I said : 

“ What a fine, large hall ! What is this for, Mr. 
Bentley ? ” 

“We will fit this up with platform and pulpit, 
and seat it with chairs for prayer-meetings, Gos- 
pel meetings, etc., and when it rains they .can use 
it for the preaching service.” 

I did not speak my thoughts, but I said to 
myself: “ That does not sound much like an unbe- 


Our Pledge Roll. 221 

liever ; I knew my boys would not disappoint me 
in this building.” 

In due time it was completed and dedicated to 
the worship of God and the cause of Gospel tem- 
perance, and became the rallying-point of our 
Gospel temperance forces for a large section of 
country. 

In the first meeting held in the hall, many of 
the boys of the club and their families being pre- 
sent, 1 was called upon by the leader of the meet- 
ing to offer prayer ; and I prayed, asking the bless- 
ing of God upon the work which had seemed in 
its outward manifestation to crystallize into the 
form of this tabernacle. I asked God to look 
upon the men gathered together that day, who 
had labored with their own hands upon that 
building, and, whether they ever prayed or not, 
to consider every stroke of hammer or saw, every 
sweep of the brush, every dollar invested, as a 
prayer, and answer in a rain of salvation upon 
their hearts and homes. I felt that the time had 
come for many of those for whom so many 
prayers had been offered to enter into the king- 
dom of God. 

And I was not disappointed. In that place 
Uncle Jim and many of the companions of his 
drinking-days and his co-laborers in the club 
humbly bowed at the altar of consecration, and, 
renouncing self, received Christ, and passed from 
reformation to transformation by the renewing of 
their minds under the power of the indwell- 
ing Spirit of God. And for those who have 


2 2 2 


Our Pledge Roll. 


not yet come to Christ for salvation we have 
still the earnest expectation that they will yet 
be found among those who are known by his 
name. 


\ 


Part II. 

— — ■ 

THE PLEDGE AND THE CROSS: 


COMPRISING PRACTICAL TALKS TO REFORMED MEN AND 
CHRISTIANS UPON THE GREAT QUESTIONS OF THE 
DAY CONCERNING OUR REFORM WORK. 


223 





The Pledge and the Cross. 


\ 

CHAPTER I. 

THE PLEDGE AND ITS POWER. 


“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” 
— Acts i. 8. 

“For my own good, and the good of the world in which I live, I hereby 
promise and engage, with the help of Almighty God, to abstain from buy- 
ing, selling, or using alcoholic or malt beverages, wine and cider included.” 
— Dr. H. A. Reynolds. 

TREAT importance is attached to 
this pledge in our day, as it deserves ; 
and it is worth while to seek to know 
its power, and the conditions of suc- 
cess or failure, in the work which it 
is expected to do. 

This pledge has a work to do for 
God — a work in lifting up the 
thoughts and energies of men from 
their grovelling in the mire of drunk- 
enness to a point where they can take hold of the 
truth as it is in Christ. 

But some one may object : “ Christ must be 
first and last in the salvation of a soul.” Cer- 
tainly ; and it is only as the power of the Gospel 

225 



226 The Pledge and the Cross . 

of Christ works in the pledge that we make use 
of it. But if the brain of a man is addled with 
drink he cannot apprehend Christ. He does not 
consider himself a sinner; he is just as apt to 
blasphemously preach a maudlin gospel as to con- 
fess his need of salvation. A man whose brain is 
disabled by alcohol cannot pray, cannot believe, 
cannot be brought under genuine conviction of 
sin. 

Christ says : “ Now are ye clean through the 
word which I have spoken unto you.” To be 
made clean by the word a man must first hear, 
then receive and understand to some degree ; and 
the mission of the temperance pledge is to get a 
man sober, so he shall return to the normal con- 
dition of intelligence, and be able to receive truth 
and exercise his mental and moral powers in 
legitimate directions. 

I believe that if a man will take this pledge 
in the true spirit of it all through it will be a 
“schoolmaster to teach him of Christ.” 

Now, I wish to take up this pledge and analyze 
it, and I will suppose that I have before me an 
audience of candid thinking men, who are honestly 
endeavoring to find the true way of life, and are 
willing to be led of the Spirit of God. I shall, 
therefore, speak plainly of these things out of the 
solemn and earnest convictions of my own heart. 

In seeking for the power of the pledge we 
would naturally look at the motive which is back 
of it. In the motive of the heart lies, as a rule, 
the secret of a right or wrong life— the strength 


The Pledge and the Cross. 227 

of word and act. The fact that you believe a sin- 
cere motive lies back of an act or word will often 
excuse error and give strength where otherwise 
would be but despicable weakness. It is the mo- 
tive lying back of a promise or profession which 
gives or destroys validity. 

The temperance pledge is a promise in the 
best and highest meaning of the word, but it is 
only a promise ; and back of it, to make it valid, I 
must be all that any other promise involves : 
first , a sincere intention to keep it; second \ the 
ability to do so. 

And it is upon the ground of the second condi- 
tion that the battles are fought. 

I have found, in the course of my work for 
drinking men, that the question is not, “ Would I 
like to be sober and free from the consequences 
of drink ? ” but “ Can If Is it possible for me, with 
the terrible strength of this thirst for rum within, 
and the open saloons everywhere without, besides 
a thousand accessory influences making appeals 
to every vitiated sense — can I get away from this 
bondage and be free ? ” So this question resolves 
itself into one of ways and means — “ How can I ? ” 

If there is a drinking man — a slave — in my au- 
dience of readers, I wish I might so present the 
truth of this gospel of salvation that he should 
quickly apprehend the short method to successful 
reform. 

First. “ For my own good," says the pledge. 
This purely selfish motive is a necessary one in 
this work. You must sign the pledge for your- 


228 


The Pledge and the Cross . 


self, and not another — not because Jim, and Jack, 
and Dick do, but just as though no other man ever 
thought of doing so ; as though none other ever 
needed it but you. It is a personal matter whether 
you drink or are sober. If you drink it is, as I 
said to Henry Fraley, your own blood that is 
poisoned ; your own nerves that are racked Avith 
the tormenting fever ; your own brain that is 
cooked ; your own head that aches ; your OAvn 
back that is stripped ; your own name that is dis- 
honored ; and your own soul that is lost. It is a 
personal matter, I repeat ; and in this case it must 
be, first, every man for himself. The love of the 
crowd is one great curse of our people. Men and 
women are borne thoughtlessly along the high- 
way of ruin by this passion of the throng. They 
go to the circus because the crowd is there ; they 
go to the theatre, the saloon, they stand upon the 
street-corners, for the same reason ; and often, for 
the same reason, will rush to the temperance meet- 
ing or the Gospel service ; will often press forward 
toward the pledge, or to the altar of prayer, im- 
pelled by the same motive which would send them 
to the bar for a drink under other circumstances — 
simply because the “rest go.” It is a grand mo- 
ment for man or woman Avhen they can say to the 
throng : “ No ! go your way, if you will, but I 
stand here upon this principle of right, if I must 
stand alone. For my own good I promise and 
engage to touch not, taste not, handle not the 
unclean thing.” There is something in the soul 
of every man that will never be fully satisfied with 


The Pledge and the Cross. 229 

corruption, that will cry out against his own 
pollution, and that must suffer the keenest dis- 
appointment, like that of gnawing hunger, if it be 
denied the Christ- purchased boon of personal 
purity. And out of just such a need of a strug- 
gling soul came this language of our pledge, and 
it expresses all there js of the instinct of self-pre- 
servation as the first motive of reform. 

Secondly. For the good of the world in which I 
live. In this the motive is lifted up out of the 
realm of selfishness, of instinct, into that of phi- 
lanthropy and reason. Considering the fact that 
“the world’' is simply the aggregation of indi- 
viduals, the surest means of reaching the ends of 
philanthropy are for each man and woman to 
make themselves pure and true, and bring all their 
own powers up to the standard which is estab- 
lished in the Gospel. The man who destroys vi- 
cious tendencies in his own heart, and subdues in 
himself those passions that tend to disorder, cor- 
ruption, contamination, and the hurt of person or 
estate, is a public benefactor, and relieves the city 
or commonwealth of a tax for his restraint or 
prosecution and punishment, and furnishes upon 
his own account, and at his own expense, a good 
citizen. 

I have heard people who were not in much 
sympathy with reform work complain that re- 
formed men were “ so much made of simply for 
becoming decent, as if they were conferring a favor 
upon society and the Church by becoming sober.” 
I claim fearlessly that that man has conferred a 


230 


The Pledge and the Cross. 


favor upon the world at large, and one which 
should receive acknowledgment from all who are 
seeking the well-being of men, in that he has re- 
moved a nuisance and established in its place that 
which will contribute to the public good. 

If there be a marshy slough, a sink-hole of filth, 
a breeding-place of fogs and nuisance in the vi- 
cinity of your town, and some man, first for the 
security of his own home, and secondly for the 
good of the community, should drain and cleanse 
it, and turn it into a fruitful field, you would award 
him the praise of having performed a truly bene- 
volent act, and call the field by his name for ever. 
Just such a work is being done to-day by every 
man who is honestly seeking to reform his own 
life from the pestilential influences of strong drink. 
And then as we know no man liveth or dieth to 
himself, but reaches out to other lives, and takes 
hold of generations yet to come in the influences 
which emanate from his life and example, we be- 
lieve the good which will come to the world out 
of the reform from the drink habit will be realized 
more fifty or a hundred years hence than to-day. 
Instead of transmitting to your children the one 
law of self-indulgence, they will inherit the nobler 
principles of self-denial. Instead of blood vitiated 
by the poison of alcohol, feverish and putrid with 
decay, they will inherit the springs of life and 
health, along the course of whose streams shall 
grow virtue, purity, love, temperance — all the 
sweet fruits of the Spirit ; for all the lands of this 
inheritance slope toward the East and lie under 


The Pledge and the Cross. 231 

the light of the Gospel, and its waters flow thither 
towards the ocean of eternal life. And the day 
when the influence of rum shall be eliminated 
from the blood and brain, from the homes and 
society, from the religion and politics of our land, 
will be the eve of the millennium, when there shall 
be no more curse and nothing to hurt in all the 
holy mountain. 

The temperance reform, as it is working to-day, 
out and in and through the institutions of Church 
and state, of home and society, is the grandest 
conservator of the public good that the Gospel 
ever endowed and sent forth, and promises more 
for the future of our nation and to the nations yet 
unborn. God grant that it be able to fulfil its 
promise ! 

There is one necessary condition which is ex- 
pressed in the clause of our pledge : “ With the 
help of Almighty God.” 

There is great power in the motives which have 
been already considered, and in the human will ; 
but, as a rule, these are inadequate for the pur- 
poses of reform from habits of life which have 
been formed by the consent, ay, by the conni- 
vance, of the will, and in spite of all the motives 
that love of self, of friends, and of fellow-men 
could bring to bear against them. There is al- 
ways more or less danger that, at the critical 
point in the conflict with the drink demon, the will 
of the man will turn traitor and carry everything 
over to the enemy, and this possibility makes this 
part of our pledge a necessity. I would not say 


232 The Pledge and the Cross. 

% 

that no man can drop the use of alcoholic drinks 
and be sober unless he become a Christian ; but 
at the very best it is a great risk. As long as he 
has nothing but the matter of reformation to en- 
gross his attention, and he can mass all his forces 
at this point, he will get along very well, even 
easily, and sail on with flying colors. But some 
time in his history, sooner or later, his energies 
will be demanded at other points, to meet a great ^ 
sorrow of some kind, some business crisis, some 
disaster or disappointment in friends or fortune, 
and the stronghold of his appetite will be left all 
unguarded, and the enemy, ever on the alert, will 
walk in and possess the citadel and hold riotous 
sway, to the shame of manhood and the sorrow of 
heaven; and, in the graphic language of Jesus, 

“ The last state of that man will be worse than 
the first.” 

It may be that I have in my audience some man 
who does not care much for the “ Gospel part ” 
of this temperance, and thinks he would have 
liked this pledge just as well if this clause had 
been left out ; and yet I am sure that you are 
every one candid thinking men, willing to inves- 
tigate the truth, willing to be convinced, willing 
to accept, anxious to find and appropriate the 
best and surest methods of reform ; and to you I 
wish to say that right here in this clause lies the 
power of the pledge— in the recognition of God 
and the need of his help. 

“ There is no power but of God,” said St. Paul ; 
and the promise of your heavenly Father and co- 


233 


The Pledge and the Cross . 

laborer in this work is that ye “ shall receive 
power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon 
you.” 

How quickly would you get this evil and ini- 
quity of the drink-traffic out of the land, utterly 
removing it and its temptation from your own 
path and from the way of your children, if you 
had power enough ! How quickly would you rid 
your own life and heart of the traces of the curse, 
and stand up pure and clean and invulnerable, if 
but you had the power! The power is in God, 
and the result depends upon the power applied. 

I fully believe this, and if I should offer you the 
pledge without the Gospel I should be doing just 
the same thing as though I should offer to sell 
you a sewing-machine without the treadle or 
band- wheel, an organ without the bellows, or a 
locomotive without the steam-chest ; and you 
would call that swindling. Ay, further than this, 
if I should say to you that this pledge was suffi- 
cient in itself, because it does, in its phraseology, 
acknowledge God and your need of his help, I 
should be doing just the same as though I should 
bring you a complete sewing-machine, organ, or 
locomotive, and say : “ Now, this is a perfect in- 
strument for doing a specified kind of work, and 
you need nothing more, no external power needs 
be applied; the sewing-machine will run without 
treading, the organ will play without blowing or 
fingering, the locomotive will run without fire or 
steam, because each is perfect in its mechanism 
and complete in itself.” And you would call that 


234 


The Pledge and the Cross . 


the sheerest folly and bragging, and would lose con- 
fidence at once in the whole thing, and say that I 
cared more for making a sale than for the good of 
my purchaser. And yet if I could make you be- 
lieve all this, that the sewing-machine would turn 
out garments to order without anything being 
added to it, I should make sales quickly enough 
— indeed, hardly be able to supply the demand. 
And so, I suppose, if I should come and say that 
simply signing this pledge would make you a 
sober man — would so thoroughly break the spell 
of the cup over your soul that it should tempt you 
no more ; if I could make you, poor slave of the 
monster, believe that all the power requisite was 
invested in this simple pledge with your name 
attached, you would not wait until I had finished 
speaking, but would hasten to the table and write 
your name, and tie on the magic symbol, and go 
away rejoicing in freedom and purity. But no ; 
you all recognize the fact that the pledge is but 
the declaration of a purpose to be free, with many 
a hard battle to follow, with possibilities of defeat 
all along the line. 

How to keep the pledge? is the great question 
to-day with thousands who have fallen by the way, 
and are despairingly looking up at the possibilities 
of a sober life, and trying to reckon up the chances 
for and against them in the grand result of success- 
ful reform. 

And the answer to this question is in the Gospel 
declaration that “ ye shall receive power after 
that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” In 


The Pledge and the Cross. 235 

other words, the power is deposited in the Spirit 
of God, and if his work be added to your endea- 
vor it shall be sufficient. 

The power of God is like a self-adjusting bal- 
ance, and whatever the weight of temptation that 
may be piled in on your side of the scales, his 
power will hold the beam of the balance steady 
and level, so that it shall swerve neither up nor 
down. The man who finds his balance in God is 
secure. 

Perhaps some one will answer me, as did one of 
my Rockford “ Reform Boys ” once : “ I can keep 
the pledge in my own strength.” To any such I 
shall reply, as I did to him : “ Bless your heart, 
Charley ! you haven’t any of your own. All the 
strength that is in you, all that was in you before 
it was dissipated by an evil life, belongs to God. 
It is his by right of investiture ; it is yours only 
as loaned capital might be yours. God deposited 
sufficient in you in the beginning, if you had used 
it aright, to have made you a clean man, as far as 
absolute defilement is concerned ; but you have 
wasted a goodly portion, and now there is in you 
a great lack. I will not say that you cannot keep 
sober unless you become a Christian, but you can- 
not without God’s help, for he has instituted all 
the forces that are working in this reform. There 
is no power in it but that which is of God.” 

I said further to Charley that day what I will 
repeat to you : That to be a reformed man is not 
to be a saved man necessarily ; and we wish for 
you, dear brethren of the Reform Club, the very 


236 The Pledge and the Cross. 

best gifts. We are ambitious for you, with an 
ambition that reaches out and lays hold of all there 
is in the kingdom of God’s grace, which grasps all 
the grandest possibilities of a redeemed manhood. 
Do not stop until you have joined the transformed 
hosts who are hastening on to appear in Zion be- 
fore God for the grand review, before they break 
ranks and go out to take possession of the inheri- 
tance of eternal peace. 

A young man to whom I gave the pledge one 
day said in the course of the talk we had over it, 
as we sat by the long reading-table upon which 
the pledge roll was lying : 

“ You see, I have been engaged to be married to 
the noblest girl in the world now* for seven years. 
She has always said she loved me too well to 
marry me as long as I drank and until I was fit 
to get married. She said she should never marry 
any one but me, but would never marry me until 
I was a good man.” 

“ And you have gone on drinking all these seven 
years in the face of'this girl’s love for you ! ” 

“ Yes, I’ve been a fool; but I’m going to quit , 
stop short off, and I shall take this pledge to her 
to-night, and tell her I have signed it for her 
sake.” 

“ Is this girl, then, the motive of this pledge? ” 
I asked. 

“ Why, yes ; and a pretty good one, too.” 

“Yes, a good one, I doubt not,” I replied, “and 
I would not underrate the value of a pledge taken 
in this way ; but I assure you that, if this is your 


The Pledge and, the Cross. 237 

only motive or the foundation motive, you will 
not keep it.” 

“ You speak very positively,” he replied grave- 

*y- 

“ I speak from some knowledge of these mat- 
ters,” I said, “ and I take it that you are in down- 
right earnest, or, as the boys say, ‘ mean busi- 
ness .’ ” 

“ I do indeed.” 

“Then allow me to say that, while you are pay- 
ing a high compliment to this woman to give up a 
life-long habit for her, yet it is not enough. You 
are trying to make yourself pure for her sake, and, 
as a woman, I must honor you for this; but this is 
not sufficient. For the same motive you would 
be led into vice instead of virtue, if she thus led 
you; don’t you see? It must be for the sake of 
your own manhood, and because of the right. 
You want to take this pledge and keep it because 
God commands purity ; because your own soul 
must have it or die ; because to remain as you are 
is to live in sin. If this girl is the only motive, why 
just suppose something should come between you 
and her; suppose she should die, where is your 
motive. Gone; and you drift back into the old 
way of self-indulgence again, and lie down in your 
pollution to die and sink to a drunkard’s hell. 
Just let me counsel you to sink the motive of 
your pledge in the solid rock of a principle of 
obedience to God, and find its power in him, and 
then you shall become all that you desire to be for 
the sake of this woman.” . 


238 The Pledge and the Cross. 

This young man took thoughtfully all I said, and 
went his way. 

Within a week from that time, one night about 
midnight I was awakened by a call at the street- 
door of my house, and, going down, I found this 
same young man waiting, and he exclaimed : “ Oh ! 
come with me quickly, for Nellie is dying.” I 
hastily made ready, and went out upon the street 
with him. As we were walking rapidly to the 
home of the young woman he told me how she 
had been suddenly stricken down with malignant 
disease, and could live but a very short time — 
not more than an hour. 

“But she wants to see you,” he said, “and we 
want you to pray for us ; and, oh ! what made 
you say what you did when I signed the pledge ? ” 

“ About the motive ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ I hardly know why I used just the words I 
did, but I wanted you to understand the truth.” 

“ I understand now,” he said. “ I can see now 
just how it might be. But I have been doing 
as you said : I have been praying and asking God 
to give me his spirit. I prayed for Nellie before I 
left to come for you, and I want to give myself all 
up to God with all I have ; but oh ! it is hard to 
see her die. Why have I been such a fool all 
these years ? ” 

It was a scene never to be forgotten as we stood 

about the death-bed of that lovely girl that night 

for she died before the morning. “ Help him,” she 
said more than once, pointing to her betrothed. 


The Pledge and the Cross . 239 

“ Save him. I would have liked to live to help 
him to grow good, but may be it is as well that I 
die.” 

And as this strong man bowed in his anguish 
beside her couch during the last terrible struggle 
with death, as the earthly motive for his reforma- 
tion passed out like a float caught in the undertow 
of the sea, he cast about for anchorage, and found 
it down among the strong rocks of God’s promises ; 
and from that solemn hour he went in the strength 
that “ God supplies through his Eternal Son,” the 
motive of his life being “ for Christ's sake ,” and the 
aim being to make himself, by God’s grace, such 
a man as eternal Love had planned in him. 

I saw a beautiful illustration one day of the 
pledge and its power which left a vivid im- 
pression upon my mind. 

It was my good fortune to visit a locomotive 
manufactory, and I was shown all through the 
works by the gentlemanly foreman, who was a 
member of the Reform Club that had called me to 
the town. He explained the processes of manu- 
facture to me with a degree of enthusiasm which 
showed that he was thoroughly in love with his 
work. At last we stood in the great room where 
the finishing work was done, and the perfect 
engines were left standing on the tracks, like 
mettlesome steeds saddled and bridled, and ready 
to leap forward on the race of a thousand miles. 
A feeling, almost of awe, came over me as I stood 
and looked the great creature in the eye, and 
walked around her as she stood gorgeous in her 


240 


The Pledge and the Cross . 


trappings of brass and copper, and with her chest 
of steel palpitating, I almost fancied, with sup- 
pressed energy. It seemed like a reckless thing 
to stand upon the track in front of her, and in spite 
of myself I stepped quickly off to a safe distance, 
much to the amusement of my guide. Many 
thoughts passed through my mind as I looked 
over this wonderful piece of workmanship, this 
mighty engine representing so much power ; for, 
in spite of all that was expected of her, in spite of 
all the perfection of her mechanism and the possi- 
bilities of speed, she was as passive and powerless 
as a clod. If she ever moved from her present 
position it must be by some power outside of her 
present resources. You might hitch on a team 
and draw her, you might push her from behind, 
you might load her upon a car and carry her thus, 
but, as far as any real, inherent power was con- 
cerned, she was simply a dead, cold mass of glit- 
tering metal, and I thought: “ Here is the proto- 
type of the pledge, an illustration of this engine of 
reform.” 

My friend stepped aboard into the engineer’s 
cab, and played with the throttle-valve and lever, 
as he explained to me how the engine was to be 
controlled, and I thought: 

“ Now, here we have the pledge with the man 
added ; but still there is something lacking. But 
just let the fireman come along now, and fill the 
tank with water, and ‘ fire up,’ and how soon the 
dull, cold mass of metal would become instinct 
with life and power, so that we must, indeed, keep 


241 


The Pledge and the Cross. 

off her track and out of her way, and give her 
room to execute the commands of the strange 
force that has entered and taken possession of her 
heart of steel ! ” 

As the fire, and water, and steam are to the 
locomotive, so is the Father, the Son, and the 
Holy Spirit to the temperance reform. Although 
this engine be dead, cold, powerless in herself, yet 
she is constructed in beautiful harmony with a law 
of spiritual force which is simply waiting for re- 
cognition. Let this force be taken aboard and 
utilized, and she will not onty stand the grandest 
engine ever constructed in the great workshop of 
the Church, but she will spring forward upon the 
track, and sweep on, leading after her the long 
train of dependent reforms to the great centre of 
all reform, which is the Cross of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. 


CHAPTER II. 


THE RIBBON AND THE BLOOD. 

HAVE been many times asked why 
I always use the red ribbon in 
token of the pledge in preference 
to any of the other colors in use. 
I suppose the answer to this may 
be found in the reply of one of the 
leading reformers of our day. I 
asked him : 

“ What does the red ribbon 
mean to you, anyhow?” 

It was some little time before 
he replied. He sat with his eyes cast down to the 
little emblem which he wore upon his vest, and 
which he had taken between his thumb and finger ; 
and at length, looking up with a solemn and yet 
tender expression in his face, he said : 

“ Well, to me it is a kind of a passover sign.” 

And at once my mind leaped back along the 
ages, and I saw the children of God in bondage 
to a despot, who compelled them to make brick 
without straw, just like King Alcohol, and who, 
like him, made a command, and compelled its 
execution, that all the sons of the people should 
be slain. Then I remember how one was raised 

243 



The Pledge and the Cross. 243 

up from among those sons — from among those 
upon whom the despot’s sentence of death had 
passed — rescued by the tenderness and compassion 
of woman, and appearing in the very presence of 
the king for the deliverance of his brethren ; and 
then I recalled the solemn preparations for flight, 
the dish of bitter herbs with a kid of the flocks, 
and the scarlet line of the blood upon the door- 
posts, so that when the destruction which the 
king had planned for the captives should over- 
take his own house and people, the angel of death 
should know by the red symbol of salvation that 
he must pass over the homes of the captivity, and 
leave the oppressed to go out toward Canaan 
under the cover of the darkness and desolation 
that should brood over palace and hovel alike. 

The red ribbon a passover sign ! How much it 
means, then, and how true its signification ! De- 
stroying angel of the cup of temptation, when 
)^ou see that man with the scarlet emblem upon 
his vest, pass him by! You have no claim upon 
him. A solemn promise has been recorded be- 
tween him and thee; you have no more in com- 
mon. This ribbon means, boys of the club, that 
invitations to drink are to pass you by, and you 
are to pass by all drinking-places ; and it means 
more. 

A large meeting was held in a city which had 
just been reached by the red-ribbon movement, 
and a great number of men — some of them leaders 
in the business and society of the town — were 
reached by it, and came to the front with much 


244 -The Pledge and the Cross . 

zeal to avow their fealty to the cause. Several 
representative men were upon the platform with 
the gentleman who had inaugurated the work, 
who was none other than the great apostle of 
reform himself. Short speeches were made by 
the new disciples, and one, in the course of his 
remarks, said : 

“I like this movement, because there is no law 
in it, no politics in it, no religion in it,” referring 
to the “non-legal, non-political, non-sectarian” 
plank in the platform. He had no sooner ceased 
than the doctor arose, his tall form more command- 
ing than ever before, as he said : 

“ My brother labors under a misapprehension. 
He would not have said there is neither law, 
politics, nor religion in this movement had he been 
present when I expounded the principles of this 
pledge and platform. And I wish it distinctly 
understood that there is religion in it — not sec- 
tarianism, but religion in its purest and broadest 
sense. I want it distinctly understood that we are 
a Christian institution ; that the ministers of the 
Gospel and Christian people are, as a rule, our best 
friends. Our pledge is planted by the Cross of 
Christ ; and this little red ribbon is to me a token 
of the red blood by which we are redeemed.” 

And sitting under the electric influence of 
thqse words as they came out of the earnest heart 
of the great reformer, I said again : “ This is the 
emblem for our reform.” To every man who 
wears it with any sense of his own need, and any- 
thing like a true idea of what all this work con- 


templates, it must mean : “ Onward ! No stopping 
here at the pledge, but onward to the Cross ! ” — 
not the ribbon on my vest alone, but the Blood 
to cover all my sin. 

Reformed men do sometimes object to much 
religion, because to them religion means j^/ism. 
But they do not often object to genuine godliness ; 
and I, for myself, like the Gospel better than re- 
ligion. The great need is the true Spirit of Christ 
pervading all our work ; for this work in which 
we are engaged in these days means, as Mrs. 
Mary E. Hartt, of Brooklyn, N. Y., said in a letter 
to me : “ The baptism of the Holy Ghost upon 
the workers, and regeneration for those for whom 
we labor.” And this is typified in the ribbons, 
red and white, which we wear. 


CHAPTER III. 


MUTUAL RELATION OF REFORM CLUB AND 
CHURCH. 

F all the questions concerning the 
temperance reform to-day, none is 
of more importance than the one 
which is embodied in the topic 
of this address. There is a rela- 
tion, vital and exacting, between 
the Reform Club and the Church 
— a relation involving obligations 
and responsibilities upon both 
sides which cannot safely be ig- 
nored by either; in fact, life and work depend 
upon the manner in which these obligations are 
met, this relation acknowledged and sustained. 

The relation is not elective, like that of friends 
or lovers, husband and wife — one which may be 
dissolved upon occasion — but it is in the blood, 
prenatal ; it is the relation of mother and son. 
The Reform Club is the son of the Church, and 
as such should receive protection, support, love, 
tender consideration for all weakness and strong 
help in every laudable effort, counsel where there 
is danger of error, and should give loyal heed 
not necessarily to sectarian, dogmatic teaching, 

246 



247 


The Pledge and the Cross . 

but to all true and affectionate admonition, and 
should pay most profound respect to all her prin- 
ciples, and furnish a continual supply of develop- 
ing resources for her support. It has been proven 
that in so far as these facts are kept in sight, and 
the club and Church mutually support each other, 
both prosper, and the great ends of reform and 
salvation are more surely met ; but, on the other 
hand, when they have stood aloof the one from 
the other, criticising and fault-finding, bitterness 
has resulted, strife has been engendered, and the 
name of both club and Church has suffered re- 
proach. 

I have said that the Reform Club is the son of 
the Church. It is possible that some members of 
the club will say, as they have done : “ How is 
that? What had the Church to do with my sign- 
ing the pledge and joining the club ? ” Perhaps 
some Church members will say, as they have said : 
“ What have we to do with the club ? It does not 
recognize us ; it does not seek or welcome the 
Church or its influences. We have nothing in 
common but the principle of temperance solely.” 

To both these parties we have the same an- 
swer : 

“ Yet ye are of one blood, and one interest lies 
between you.” 

How does it happen that you reformed men are 
not in the saloons to-day, as you once were ? How 
does it happen that you are wearing the red rib- 
bon or any other emblem of this reform ? Let 
me tell you how it came about. I will take one 


248 


The Pledge and the Cross . 


case, which shall stand as the representative of a 
thousand, yea, of tens of thousands. 

Years ago there was in the Church a Christian 
woman, a godly, pure wife and mother ; she gave 
her love and work, her heart and life and means, 
to the Church. She had a son — you were that 
son; she taught you her faith in God — for she 
was faithful to her home in all things — but the 
world, the flesh, and the devil got you by the ear 
and taught you a philosophy never dreamed of 
by her ; taught you to walk in ways that were 
marked out in no chart she had ever studied. She, 
in simple and true fidelity to God and your soul, 
gave you to God in a prayer that was renewed 
day by day, morning and evening ; but you gave 
yourself to the devil and followed him faithfully. 
And the time came that she realized it all : that her 
son was a prodigal, was a drunkard and a liber- 
tine ; and what did she do? Oh! you remember. 
She cried to God against this iniquity of the house 
of sin, the saloon and the drink-curse. Her cry 
was taken up by hundreds of voices pitched to 
the key of a mother’s agony ; and so she prayed 
on until, perhaps, her voice was drowned by the 
waters of death, and there was a great silence in 
that place where she had called upon God for 
you. But those prayers were recorded and were 
answered out of heaven. When the cloud of the 
crusade rolled over the land, that cloud was the 
smoke of the incense of those prayers, and when 
its lightning struck it struck down in the saloons. 
When that mother’s prayer was answered, a man, 


The Pledge and the Cross. 249 

perhaps growing gray 111 sin, walked up and 
signed a temperance pledge, and tied the badge 
of this reform upon his vest. 

You know how it has been for years ; you have 
looked in at many churches as the people came in 
to the service in the morning or evening; the 
congregation was two-thirds women. There has 
come in Sunday after Sunday, for years, a woman 
alone, with perhaps young children with her. 
YV hjr is she alone ? She is not a widow. Where 
is the husband and older son this Sabbath morn- 
ing? Sleeping off' at home the Saturday’s drunk, 
or down in the saloon. That woman has gone to 
prayer-meeting week by week alone for the same 
cause. You have heard her pray, and there was a 
terrible pathos sometimes in the tone that meant so 
much more than the words expressed. She has 
sometimes asked the church to pray for her and 
hers, and prayers have been offered again and 
again ; and when those prayers of that wife and the 
church were answered, a man who had almost for- 
gotten his marriage-vow has suddenly awakened 
to a sense of his obligations as husband and father, 
as a man, and has walked out of the saloon and up 
to the temperance meeting, and has signed the 
pledge and tied on the ribbon, and joined the great 
army of the reformed, and very often has gone on 
to join the company of the transformed. 

Ask that woman, as she walks into church some 
Sabbath morning with her husband by her side 
what is the relation between her little part of the 
Church and his little part of the Reform Club, and 


250 


The Pledge and the • Cross. 

she will tell you it is a very intimate one. And 
ask him what relation exists between his part of 
the club and her part of the Church, and he will 
say : “ It is a very sacred one, and because of that 
relation I am all that I am ; that is bettei than lost 
and undone.” 

It is a grand truth that the Reform Club is the 
embodied answer to the prayers of the Christian 
Church, and every man who wears the red or blue 
ribbon wears it because some one has prayed for 
him. Many a Christian mother has looked out 
over the battlements of heaven, many are thus 
looking this very hour, to behold their sons, whom 
they had bequeathed to the Church of God, 
standing behind and before the drinking-bars of 
our land, selling and buying the cup of devils. 
And they are also looking, as do the stern and 
awful eyes of your Master, to see what you, Chris- 
tian man and woman, are going to do about it. 

I believe the Reform Club is the legitimate re- 
cruiting-ground of the Church. There or in the 
saloons are the men who must be converted and 
come into the Church, if its ranks are filled up. 
The money which should make and endow Chris- 
tian homes is being spent for drink. The money 
which should pay off church debts is flowing 
in a steady stream into the coffers of the saloon. 
The money which should support our missionaries, 
and bring all peoples of every name and tongue to 
the fountain of healing, is corrupted to the unholy 
service of the god of this world, whose name is, at 
this writing, known as Alcohol. 


* 5 * 


The Pledge and the Cross. 

The liquor-traffic is an incarnation of that spirit 
of Antichrist which should come ; and of all the 
forces that oppose the progress of the Gospel, 
this is the most mighty. He casts out faith from 
the heart. Almost every man who has spent any 
length of time under the influence of drink associa- 
tions will profess all infidelity. He does not be- 
lieve in God ; and yet there is nothing more sure 
than that, in the great majority of instances, in a 
return to sobriety these things are left behind. 
The reformed man believes in God ; he believes 
in prayer; he goes on from one degree of faith to 
another, until, by a natural law of God’s own insti- 
tution, he accepts of Christ as a hungry and faint- 
ing child would accept of offered bread. He 
realizes a need which can be met by nothing but 
Christ. 

Dear friends of the Church, here is our work 
in this time. I have often said that the tempe- 
rance reform is the crank by which the whole 
machinery of the Church must be turned. The 
Church wants men. Go out, then, into the saloon 
and get them ; they are there. Call the old roll 
of your Sunday-school, and out of the saloon will 
come the answer to name after name : “ Here !” 
“ here !” Look over the old church record, and 
walk down and place it beside the “ black-list ” on 
the saloon walls, and you will be startled to find 
how they correspond. Ay, bring down the old 
family Bible, upon the pages of which are the 
records of birth of your sons and daughters, and 
it will compare with terrible accuracy with the 


252 The Pledge and the Cress. 

bill-book of the saloon. In place of your daugh- 
ter’s name you will find her husband’s ; for she is 
a drunkard’s wife. Oh ! yes, the Church must 
have men, and she must go to the saloons and 
Reform Clubs for them until a new generation has 
time to be born and grow. 

The Church wants money. Yes, she must have 
it. Then she must go to this sink-hole of the 
saloon, and step it up, and turn the tide back into 
legitimate channels. Money is needed for books, 
for charity cf all kinds, for all true and lawful 
business enterprises: to make the factories spin 
and weave ; to make wheels revolve and shafts 
play to and fro ; to open farms and build colleges 
for the homes and education of the millions. 
Whiskey, Beer & Co. never will do these things ; 
but Whiskey, Beer & Co. have the money. O 
Church and State ! why will ye allow this robber 
in our midst? He is here by your permit. He 
reigns to-day by the sufferance of the organized 
force we call the Church of God. If every man 
and woman in this great organization would stand 
against him he could not hold his pow r er. If 
every man professing the name of Jesus would 
vote as the Loi;d would do if he were still here 
manifest in the flesh, it would not be many days 
before this traffic would disappear from our land 
and be know#n no more. If every woman who is 
the centre of a Christian home would take a posi- 
tive and unequivocal position on this question, 
throwing the weight of her influence against the 
traffic in, and use of, intoxicating drinks, the time 


2 53 


The Pledge arid the Cross. 

would soon come when the evil would die for 
lack of patronage and support, and its dead car- 
cass be heaped with the scorn of societ}^ as well 
as the anathemas of the Church. 

It may be that some Christian man or woman 
will say as they read these pages: “ Why should 
I be concerned about this matter ? It is really 
nothing to me, for our home is in no sense exposed 
to the influences of this evil. We will let it alone, 
and it must let us alone.” 

I know a man and woman who said these things. 
Their home was high and lifted up, seemingly, 
from the reach of anything that could harm or 
pollute. If position, wealth, power, and a pro- 
fession of Christ could make a home secure, this 
home must have been for ever shut in away from 
the breath even of the demon. And they did not 
think that the saloon on the corner, or the Reform 
Club hall down the street, meant anything to them. 

They had two sons; and while the father and 
mother were living in fancied security, ignoring 
the saloon and scorning the club and the “tem- 
perance women,” the young men were drawn in 
by the whirlpool of death, and the day came that 
that father met his son at the door, reeling in from 
the saloon ; and another day came when the life 
of that mother was threatened by a revolver in 
the hand of her boy, crazed by drink. Then, with 
eyes dilated with horror, that woman looked upon 
the saloon as upon a gigantic serpent that was 
coiled upon the approach to her own home, and 
the Reform Club and its pledge she learned to 


254 2 V/<? Pledge and the Cross. 

look upon as a gateway cut through the wall into 
a covered avenue that led straight to the cross. 

There is no home so protected that it is not 
exposed to the great curse. You cannot build 
your walls so high, or plant your foundations so 
deep, or sweep the circumference of your power 
so wide that, with existing institutions as they 
are in our land at this day, this evil of drink will 
not find a way over, and under, and through, until 
it has made itself felt in every fibre of your being, 
except you actively, positively, and in God’s name 
bend all your powers to its overthrow. 

What is true of the home is true of the Church 
in this regard. The Church is not spared personal 
contact with this evil. It is not spared personal 
pollution ; neither will it be spared in the ruin 
which is inevitable, except its power be turned to 
the destruction of this traffic. 

We have to meet a great aggressive force; it 
must be met at every point of its extension, and it 
must be beaten back and overcome or it will over- 
come us. And not only is this true, but also that 
all interested parties must make common cause 
against this enemy or fail. Temperance and Gos- 
pel, club and Church, moral and political forces, 
all must combine in not only one grand move- 
ment, as orators say, but in constant, every-day 
work. 

The Reform Club cannot live and grow without 
the Church, neither can the Church do the work 
which must be done to secure the salvation of the 
world, without the help of this reform. The work 


The Pledge and the Cross. 255 

of getting men sober is necessary to their salva- 
tion. And as John the Baptist prepared the way 
for Christ, so do the club and its mission pre- 
pare the way for the Church and its office. And 
as the preaching of John the Baptist would have 
been without significance but for the “ One who 
should come after ” ; and as his baptism of repent- 
ance was only an empty form but for the Spirit’s 
baptism of fire which it typified ; so now all the 
teaching of this reform, and all its ministry from 
first to last, would be but a mockery and a farce but 
for the Gospel of Jesus. And as the words of John 
were true when he said : “ I must decrease ; he 
must increase,” so now this reform must give 
place to the Gospel, or the whole plan fail and 
the object of the reform itself be defeated. But 
as John was necessary to Jesus, so now is the tem- 
perance reform necessary to the Church. The 
Reform Club is a member of the Church just as 
truly as is the Sunday-school, and no amount of 
infidelity on the one hand or coldness on the other 
can change this fact. By virtue of pre-existing 
relations is this true. Any member of the body, 
ignored and unused, becomes a burden; severed, 
it dies and leaves behind a wound and deformity ; 
accepted, cared for, utilized, it becomes a source 
of power and profit. So with these great organi- 
zations. 

The time has been when there existed a mu- 
tual misunderstanding in many places between the 
club and Church. The Church had its plans and 
programme of work matured, and was woiking 


256 The Pledge and the Cross. 

them out, when suddenly and unexpectedly, and 
not wholly welcomed, this son was thrust into her 
arms. A change of the whole domestic economy 
was demanded by the stranger, and there were 
protestations, and complainings, and discord. 
Many who read these pages will recall these ex- 
periences of the past. But at length there has 
come a tender remembrance of the prayers of the 
dead, as well as of those buried in a living death ; 
and looking up with misty eyes, the mother beholds, 
not a stranger and alien, but her son gotten by 
her prayers ; and love is answered by love, and 
discord is tuned to the harmony of loving la- 
bor for “ God and humanity ” ; and the household 
greeting and watchword is, From the pledge to the 
Cross . 


FOR 


Sunday-School Libraries. 


The National Temperance Society and Publication House 
have published ninety-eight books specially adapted to Sunday- 
School Libraries, which have been carefully examined and ap- 
proved by a Publication Committee of twelve representing the 
various religious denominations, and they have been highly re- 
commended by numerous ecclesiastical bodies and temperance 
organizations all over the land. They should be in every Sun- 
day-school library. The following is the list, any of which can 
be ordered through any bookseller, or direct from the rooms of 
the Society, 58 Reade Street, New York : 


At Lion’s Mouth $1 25 

Adopted 60 

Andrew Douglas 75 

Aunt Dinah's Pledge. .. . 1 25 

Alice Grant 1 25 

All for Money 1 25 

Brewery at Taylorville, 

The 1 50 

Barford Mills 1 00 

Best Fellow in the W orld, 

The 1 25 

Broken Rock, The 50 

Brook, and the Tide Turn- 
ing, The 1 00 

Brewer’s Fortune, The. . 1 50 

Caught and Fettered 1 00 

Circled by Fire 40 

Come Home, Mother 50 

Coals of Fire 1 00 

Curse and the Cure, The 40 

Curse of Mill Valley, The 1 25 
Drinking-Fountain Sto- 
ries, The 1 00 

Dumb Traitor, The 1 25 

Emerald Spray, The .... 40 

E va’s Engagement Ring . 90 

Echo Bank 85 


Esther Maxwell’s Mis- 


take $1 00 

Fanny Percy’s Knight 

Errant 1 00 

Fatal Dower, The 6o 

Firebrands 1 25 

Fire Fighters, The 1 25 

Fred’s Hard Fight 1 25 

Frank Spencer’s Rule of 

Life 50 

Frank Oldfield j or, Lost 

and Found 1 50 

From Father to Son 1 25 

Gertie’s Sacrifice j or, 
Glimpses at Two Lives. 50 

Glass Cable, The 1 25 

Karry the Prodigal 1 25 

Hard Master, The 85 

Harker Family, The 1 25 

His Honor the Mayor... 1 25 

History of a Three Penny 

Bit 75 

History of Two Lives, The 50 

Kopedale Tavern, and 
What it Wrought ..... 1 00 
Hole in the Bag, and other 
Stories, The . . . , 1 00 


FOR SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARIES.— Continued. 


How Could he Escape ?.$i 25 


Humpy Dumpy 1 25; 

Image Unveiled, The 1 00 

Jewelled Serpent, The . . 1 00 
J ohn B eutley ' s Mistake . 5 o 

Job Tufton’s Rest 1 25 

J oe’s Partner ....... 50 

Jug-or-Not 1 25 

Little Girl in Black 90 

Life Cruise of Captain 

Bess Adams, The 1 50 

McAllisters, The 50 

Mill and the Tavern, The 1 25 

Model Landlord, The 60 

More Excellent Way, A 1 00 
Mr. McKenzie’s Answer. 1 25 
National Temperance 

Orator, The 1 00 

Nettie Loring 1 25 

No Danger 1 25 

Norman Brill’s Life Work 1 00 

Nothing to Drink 1 50 

Old Times 1 25 

On London Bridge 40 

Our Coffee-Room 1 00 

Old Brown Pitcher, The. 1 oo 

Out of the Fire 1 25 

Our Parish 75 


Packington Parish, and 
the Diver’s Daughter. . . 1 25 
Paul Brewster and Son . . 1 00 
Philip Eckert’s Struggles 

and Triumphs 60 

Pitcher of Cool Water, 

The 50 


[ Piece of Silver, A $0 50 

Pledge and the Cross, The 1 co 
Queer Home in Rugby 

Court, The 1 50 

Rachel Noble’s Experi- 
ence 90 

Red Bridge, The 90 

Rev, Dr. Willoughby and 

his Wine 1 50 

Ripley Parsonage 1 25 

Rosa Leighton j or, In 

His Strength 90 

Roy’s Search 5 or, Lost in 

the Cars 1 25 

Saved 1 25 

Silver Castle 1 25 

Seymours, The 1 co 

Strange Sea Story, A. . . . 1 50 

Temperance Doctor, The. 1 25 

Temperance Speaker, 

The 75 

Temperance Anecdotes . 1 oo 

Time Will Tell 1 00 

Tim’s Troubles 1 50 

Tom Blinn’s Temperance 
Society, and other Sto- 
ries 1 25 

Ten Cents 1 25 

Vow at the Bars 40 

Wealth and Wine 125 

White Rose, The 1 25 

"Wife’s Engagement Ring, 

The 1 25 

Work and Reward. .... . 50 

Zoa Rodman 1 00 


Any of the above will be sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt 
of price. 


J. G3. STEARNS, Publishing Agent, 

58 Reade Street, New York. 





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